


Opfer

by silkinsilence



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: (Not the Symmarah the Symmarah is GREAT), F/F, Post-Recall, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 08:34:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15530346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkinsilence/pseuds/silkinsilence
Summary: Angela tries to reconcile her past and future with her own heart. Ana tries to find a home in the organization she left. The newly-recalled Overwatch struggles to stand against Talon while secrets undermine it from within.Sequel toGötze.





	1. Confiteor

**Author's Note:**

> Some disclaimers: I have relatively little of this fic planned out and don't know how long it will be. I will be posting as I write, so updates will be inconsistent. While the focus is still on Ana, Angela, and their relationship, as in Götze, other players will also have bigger parts, and the story will be more event-oriented than its prequel. There will also be less smut. I hope you still enjoy.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> one's sins confessed

The bruises on Angela’s neck rose high and dark above her collar. They looked fresh, all swollen and purple. And she was going about her business as usual, conducting his checkup as if she didn’t have the evidence of a recent liaison visible for the world to see.

Genji had seen (and proudly borne) probably an abnormally large amount of hickeys in his turn, but that had been years ago, before his father died, before Hanzo took his sword to him, before his body was more machine than man. The context now was different and quite unexpected. Until quite recently, he had seen in Angela Ziegler only the consummate professional, poised and controlled at all times. A woman who had neither cried nor begged for her life even when he had her pinned to a wall with her throat in his hands.

But recently he was starting to wonder.

“...upgrades?”

He blinked and realized that he had been paying no attention whatsoever to the doctor’s words, fixated as he was on her neck. Not for the first time he found himself relieved that the visor hid his eyes’ direction. It was more difficult for people to (justly) accuse him of not paying attention when they couldn’t see his face.

“Sorry, what was that?”

Angela sighed. “You’re discussing upgrades with Torbjörn, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes. He wants to talk about installing solar panels.”

He said it and comprehended it so easily now. A decade ago he had fought each augmentation and bristled at any discussion of his body that reminded him what it was. Now he was at peace with it—was even excited at the prospect of solar power rather than continuing the immense calorie diet that supplemented his mechanical functioning and the extra weight of his armor.

Angela nodded. “Just keep me informed, and keep yourself in one piece.”

“I will try, but that piece may be a turret.” Genji slid his legs off the bed and stood up, stretching. It was just him and Angela in the medbay; there had been no serious injuries recently, and Lúcio was taking a well-earned break as well.

“Have a good night.” Angela turned her back to retrieve her tablet. Genji hesitated. He wanted to say something, to ask something, but didn’t know exactly how.

Neither of them had broached the topic of that memorable afternoon a month ago when he had found her drunk and disoriented on the cliffs above the base. He strongly suspected she was trying to forget it happened at all, and probably wished that he would do the same. But it was difficult to banish the memories of her face red and soaked through with tears, her body shaking in his arms with the force of her sobs.

And now the bruises.

“Angela, are you...all right?” he finally asked.

Her shoulders tensed. She turned slowly, wide-eyed, as if surprised to find him still there.

“Of course. Why do you ask?”

He didn’t know how to answer that either without making her defensive. Professionalism was important to Angela, perhaps the most important thing to her. And even if their relationship was no longer the tense affair it had been, Genji did not think they were...friends.

“You should take the night off,” he settled. “There is nobody else here! Go to bed early or read a book or something.”

She blinked at him.

“Er, maybe I will. Thank you, Genji.”

She waited a few beats, and when he didn’t move, cleared her throat and spoke again.

“Good night.”

“Good night,” he said, gave her a nod, and left her alone.

Jesse was waiting in their usual spot with a bottle of bourbon and a bag of chips to share. Genji sat down beside him on the rocks and accepted his own glass. Even a late December night was mild enough here to make sitting outside pleasant. There was a breeze off the ocean and the smell of salt.

“How’s it lookin’?”

“It seems I am not dying yet.”

Jesse chuckled. “All any of us can say, right?”

He held out his own glass in a toast, which Genji accepted, and both of them drank. The whiskey burned pleasantly in his throat and stomach, a warm drink for a cool evening.

He missed Hanamura, where there had been frequent snow in the winter. Even frosty Zurich had been better. Gabriel had taken them on a memorable ski vacation once, after which they’d all joked how much more dangerous it had been than their everyday work.

Watchpoint: Gibraltar was even emptier than usual. They’d gotten time off for the holidays, and Lena, Lúcio, Reinhardt, Torbjörn, and Hana had all gone home. Winston and Athena were planning some sort of big party for the new year, but Genji doubted whether many of the remaining inhabitants would even turn up. It was difficult for him to imagine Satya doing shots, or, God forbid, Hanzo showing up and managing not to spend the evening skulking. And Angela...

“Doctor Ziegler seems tired,” he said.

“Really?” Jesse scratched at his beard. “No strikes since Dorado. Not like the medbay’s full.”

“Research?” Genji offered, and Jesse just shrugged.

“You’d know better than me what she gets up to.”

Indeed, Genji had a fairly lurid idea of exactly what Angela had been getting up to, and with whom. That was the problem. He had stumbled across an affair that didn’t concern him. Twenty years ago his instinct would have been to tell everyone all that he knew or suspected, his worry just a convenient cover. Now he found himself wanting to preserve Angela’s privacy but concerned for her all the same.

 _I just thought about_ her _and did what I wanted—_

“Tell me about Captain Amari,” he said, finishing his cup and filling it again. Jesse, startled, paused in the midst of chewing.

Ana Amari. The latest, most tentative addition to their ranks. She was almost as elusive as his brother, appearing at briefings and the occasional team dinner and few other times. She might as well have been a ghost, the legendary woman haunting the halls. Genji had heard stories, of course, of the woman who had been pronounced dead in action just a brief time before he had woken up in Zurich. But what use were stories and legends? He wanted to know less about how good a sniper she was and more about the way Angela’s glance lingered on her.

He’d seen that kind of doe-eyed idolatry before. It was the same look Hanzo had always fixed upon their father, and it had always made him sick. How pathetic to be so desperate for approval, for any sort of attention, he’d always thought. But then that had been jealousy, too.

“What do you want to know about her?”

“What kind of a woman is she?”

Jesse chuckled a little and glanced sidelong at him. “Are you askin’ me if she’s into cyborgs—ouch, okay, okay. Why are you askin’ me a thing like that?”

“I am curious. She has been with us a month but I know nothing of her, about her—”

“You know plenty about her.”

Genji sighed, wondering why he’d ever expected a straight answer. “You know what I mean.”

“Look, Genji, sure, I thought I knew her. Thought I knew Gabriel too. Then she dropped off the map and he blew up headquarters and went to join Talon. So I can tell you that she’s the best damn shot I’ve ever met, that she puts her daughter above everythin’, and that I’d trust her with my life any day of the week, but maybe that’ll all change tomorrow.”

He looked away and took a lasting drink from his cup, splashing bourbon onto his beard in his haste. The glass didn’t make it to his lips in time to hide the grimace.

Genji was quiet for a few seconds. He was thinking of what it had felt like to awaken in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar country and remember his brother eviscerating him. Betrayal was a hard pill to swallow.

“You trust her?”

“Absolutely.” Jesse paused and then corrected himself. “In a firefight, anyway. But she’s hidin’ shit. Angela too. I want to know what really went down in Dorado. What went down with Reyes. I’m sick of goin’ to funerals for people who don’t stay dead.”

Genji couldn’t stop himself from chuckling at that, and even Jesse’s lips twitched upward as he topped off both their glasses.

“If you want to know about her, ask Fareeha. Or just talk to her.”

“Perhaps you should do the same. It seems you have much you wish to say.”

“Overwatch fell apart last time because of secrets. Now we’ve started up again and we’re still all carrying them around. Nobody even knows she’s alive here with us, and she’s got a bounty on her head now—”

“As do you.”

“Not relevant. And we shouldn’t even be here, you know that, we should be out _lookin’_ for him. For them. Gabe and Jack are out there while we’re sittin’ here on our asses, and we can’t even send people out to find them without writin’ the goddamn UN in on it, but they’re _there._ We all thought they were all dead but they’re _out there._ Makes you think how much the old ‘watch was just a pack of lies. Gotta wonder if we should have built this up from the rubble in the first place.”

Genji said nothing. He didn’t have anything much to say. He didn’t disagree with Jesse; quite the contrary. Some part of him also itched to be out in the world again, tracking down his old commander. But he was not as invested, had never been as invested. Gabriel Reyes had been his commander, but to Jesse the man had been more than that. Overwatch had been Genji’s prison, his time served, but to Jesse it had been a home.

Noticing his silence, Jesse shook his head and drained his cup in a long draw.

“Okay, okay, I’m done. Let’s move on. How’s that brother of yours doing?”

It was Genji’s turn to shake his head.

“He is as prickly as ever. Our conversations end in rows more often than not. I do not think he is talking to anyone else.”

“Why’s he here? Why’d he bother comin’ if he’s gonna live like a hermit anyway?”

“I think he needs time.”

“Time?” McCree snorted. “Genji. He’s been here half a year. He doesn’t need time, he needs an intervention. A kick in the ass.”

“I agree that he will not improve in isolation, but I am unsure of what to do. I have told him many times that my master would be pleased to speak to him—”

“Your _master?_ Yeah, I’m sure that goes over real well. He’s too proud for that. Start with, I dunno, Reinhardt. Fareeha. Don’t get me wrong; I love a conversation with Zen as much as the next guy, but your brother? Nah.”

He had a point.

Genji lifted his hands to unlatch his visor and scratch at his forehead. The sea breeze was pleasant against his skin. Jesse pulled a pack of cigarillos from his pocket and lit one in the shelter of his cupped hands. He held out the pack to Genji in offering, who laughed and held up his hands.

“You are kidding, right? Doctor Ziegler would kill me.”

“Yeah, reckon she’ll get to me one of these days too. ‘Smoking’s bad for your health, you know—’”

He did a high-pitched falsetto of Angela’s accent and Genji snickered.

“She has her own bad habits.”

“Yeah?” Jesse perked up. “Like what?”

It had slipped out without thinking, and Genji instantly regretted it. Even if he chose to tell someone about that afternoon on the cliffs, this was neither the time nor place. Angela deserved better than that, than having her emotions used as kindling for a conversation. They all did.

“You think I would know?” he backpedaled. “She keeps her heart close to her chest. But nobody is perfect.”

“What about your master?” Jesse asked, grinning around his cigarillo.

Genji paused.

“You know I will not speak ill of him.”

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Jesse said, but his grin did not fade.

* * *

She had turned up the air conditioning as high as it would go, but her room was still much too hot. Every inch of her body felt sticky, slippery. Ana was panting too, sweat shining on her face, but it did not diminish the intensity in her eyes or the roughness of her grinding between Angela’s thighs.

“Are you close, _Engel_?” Ana murmured, her words breaking a long few minutes where the only noise had been their labored breaths and the sounds of their bodies moving together.

“Yes,” Angela panted. She arched her back and curled her leg tighter to dig her heel into Ana’s shoulderblade. She was as flexible as she had ever been, even with her arms cuffed to the headboard. She moved her hips in time with Ana’s steady movements between her legs. The pressure of Ana’s clothed thigh insistently moving against her vulva was heavenly.

Age had not diminished Ana’s skill in this, nor the effect her touches had on Angela. And though she wanted it to last forever, wanted to keep Ana’s eyes fixed on her and their forms pressed together, Angela could not prevent the climax when it came. Her hips jerked upward and she ground against Ana’s knee, surely staining the cloth even more than she already had.

“Captain—Captain—”

“I know,” Ana soothed, stroking the sweat from Angela’s cheek. “Come for me; that’s a good girl.”

Only when the aftershocks had passed and she laid limp and satiated did Ana lean over her and carefully unhook her wrists. Angela rubbed at the red skin with some relief. It had been just long enough for her shoulders to complain and her arms to go numb. No shorter a time than it had taken a decade ago, though.

Ana hovered above her for a few moments. Just when Angela was certain that she was going to just get up and leave, though, she leaned down for a kiss.

It was very pleasant to lay there with the afternoon sun spilling into her small dorm room and the woman she loved pressed up against her, their limbs intertwined and their mouths languidly exploring each other as they had a thousand times.

Then the kiss was over. Ana was straightening and climbing off the bed and heading for the door, apparently unconcerned about the swath of wetness staining her pants above the knee.

“Ana,” Angela forestalled her. Her lover glanced back over her shoulder. “Are you going tonight?”

“Going? To the party?” She chuckled. “I’m a little old to stay up and ring in the New Year. I’ve seen enough of them to suit me.”

“Please? It’ll be fun,” Angela pleaded. “I know Winston’s been planning it for a while. You could just come for part and leave when you get tired.”

“I’m already tired. You’re good at wearing me out, _Engel._ ”

She smiled, which took the edge off her words. Angela tried to shake them off, tried to convince herself it had not been intended as an insult.

“It would mean a lot to me if you came.”

Ana’s smile faded, and Angela almost wished she hadn’t spoken up. Almost.

“Doesn’t _this_ mean a lot to you?”

She gestured at the empty space between where she stood and where Angela lay naked in her bed, but somehow to Angela it seemed she was gesturing at all the space they had ever taken up together. Years of trysts, of kissing and touching and burning and wanting, and also of the long silence that had separated them. All that time that had gone by so quickly but stretched out in her memory. She would not say she was ungrateful for it. Suddenly her words were foolish and her meaning died on her tongue.

What more did she want? How could she dare want more when she had already gotten so much?

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry, Ana; of course you don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

Her hands twisted in the sheets. The stickiness between her thighs was uncomfortable now. Her eyes were watering and a pit had opened in her stomach. Ana was still standing there but she was already gone and Angela was alone.

A few seconds passed, seconds during which she fought to keep her breathing steady and her tears from spilling over.

“Maybe I will,” Ana said at last, quietly. “Just for a little bit.”

The door shut softly behind her. Angela gritted her teeth and refused to sob. She pulled her sheets up and furiously wiped her eyes and her nose, wondering what was wrong with her, telling herself she had nothing whatsoever to cry about.

She used the sheet to dry her inner thighs as well, making a mental note that she needed to do laundry soon, and went about getting dressed again.

On her desk was a flat box wrapped in festive paper featuring icicles and snowflakes. She’d tied blue ribbon around it and written _Zenyatta_ as tidily as she could on the tag. Certainly it looked pretty enough, but she could only hope he appreciated what was inside as well.

When Winston had arranged Secret Santa for those agents remaining at the base over the holidays, Zenyatta had resisted participation on the grounds that monks didn’t need physical gifts. He had only given in when Genji had pressured him. Angela had drawn a blank upon selecting his name, and was still quite uncertain if he would even like the gift she had chosen.

But the party promised to be a good time regardless, even if Ana didn’t come. There would be alcohol, and likely karaoke, and probably video games on the old television in the common room. At any rate it would be a few hours to forget the ennui that had settled upon Watchpoint: Gibraltar like a malevolent fog.

She picked up the box and the papers underneath it caught her eye. She’d printed the article months ago and read it so many times that she barely needed to glance at it for words and phrases to creep into her mind again. But what made her look, as it always did, was the picture. Two people smiling. Two people with no idea what happened next.

It was a reminder of why she’d put the box on top of it in the first place, so she turned away and tried to quash the thoughts and emotions that were steadily threatening to choke her.

* * *

The common room had been transformed overnight. What was usually a comfortable, if messy, collection of furniture and entertainment items was now lit with twinkling strings of white lights. Paper snowflakes hung from the windows and the ceiling, and a magnificent fir stood in one corner, strung with more lights and with a colorful collection of handmade ornaments. Mei’s little drone, Snowball, was even zipping about and offering localized flurries of snowflakes.

Those would certainly turn the tile floor into a slipping hazard later on, Satya thought, even if they were pretty now.

“Hey, you two! Happy New Year!” Winston made his way over to them. He was a rare sight outside of his own lab, and in the confines of the common room he looked almost as tall as the tree. But Satya smiled up at him and turned in time to see Fareeha do the same.

“We have a few hours left before that,” Fareeha said, smiling. “It looks really nice, Winston.”

“It does,” Satya agreed.

“I can’t take all the credit. Athena helped, and so did Mei. She made all the snowflakes! I just dragged in the tree.”

Satya looked around, taking in the white paper snowflakes with a new appreciation. She didn’t know Mei-Ling had any interest in paper craft. She found herself wishing she had spoken up to help; her own gifts would have undoubtedly come in useful.

Vishkar would be disgusted. They had trained her to build cities, to build weapons, and here she was thinking of party decorations.

“You organized it. Don’t be so modest!”

Winston looked away, fighting to hide his smile but clearly pleased by Fareeha’s praise. “Secret Santa presents go under the tree. Food and drink’s over by the kitchen...engage party mode!”

Fareeha laughed and Satya hesitantly chuckled, not sure what the joke was, and then they both turned to deposit the packages under their arms. Bastion, sitting by the tree, offered a mechanical wave and a cheerful whistle. Satya spotted Ganymede among the branches.

In a stroke of fortune, she’d drawn Fareeha’s name for Secret Santa. While there was perhaps more pressure then to be certain the gift was perfect, she also liked to think she knew Overwatch’s current Strike Commander quite...intimately. Many of the other options would have been enigmas.

She had never participated in a gift exchange before. She’d hardly gone to a work party. Vishkar had offered a yearly company celebration of Diwali, but Satya had gone only when her superiors intimated that attendance was mandatory. It had been uncomfortable and crowded, a situation that forced her to put on a mask and attempt to pretend it was possible to bridge the gap between her and other people. The lights and the music had always felt stale and overwhelming.

They had reminded her of home, where the celebration had felt different, where she had made her own little _diyas_ under her parents’ watchful gaze. The clay had been chalky and unpleasant, but the warmth of the lamp on her hands quite the opposite.

And now there was the warmth of a hand in hers and of Fareeha smiling at her, and Satya found the lights of the tree swimming in her eyes.

Watchpoint: Gibraltar’s inhabitants filled the room in bunches. Mei-Ling arrived, beaming; and then Doctor Ziegler; then Genji, McCree, and Zenyatta. Winston put on a party playlist that Satya privately found awful, but the chatter and laughter of the people she had begun to know as more than coworkers drowned it out.

An hour into the party Satya was full from snacks and pleasantly flushed from the two mint juleps Mei-Ling had mixed for her. Fareeha had not left her side; her hand had migrated from Satya’s own to protectively encircling her waist.

It took everyone a few moments to notice the room’s newest guest. She seemed to simply appear among them, not present one instant and then abruptly standing by the tree with a gift bag in hand.

“Ana!”

Doctor Ziegler exclaimed, and then Jesse followed suit, and Satya felt Fareeha’s hand clench slightly. So the elder Amari had decided to abandon her seclusion to join them after all. Satya had hardly seen Fareeha’s mother since her arrival at the base, a fact for which she was on the whole glad. Whenever their long conversations steered in the direction of Ana, Fareeha’s mood would inevitably sour. She said little, but that was enough. So Satya held two conflicting images in her mind: the second-in-command of the old Overwatch, a markswoman without peer; and the distant mother who had stubbornly denied Fareeha her dreams.

Satya was unsure whether respect or coldness would be more appropriate. But it seemed that for the moment at least she would not have to make the decision, for Winston clapped his hands and cleared his throat.

“Okay, that’s everyone! Uh, I’ll hand out presents—”

“What about Mister Shimada?” Mei-Ling cut in. Satya glanced over to where Genji was sitting on the back of the couch before she realized Mei-Ling was referring to the other Shimada, the one who joined Ana in keeping habits so reclusive they made her look like a social butterfly.

“He’s not coming. It’s fine,” Genji said. “Seriously, do not worry.”

Mei-Ling still looked concerned, but Winston was already crossing the room to the tree and scooping up gifts.

“Okay, we’ve got—Zenyatta? There you go—Angela—Genji—”

When he came to Satya, she was startled to discover herself holding a familiar gift bag. She glanced across the room and found Ana Amari’s eye staring firmly in her direction. Shaken, she looked away again.

Soon all the gifts had been distributed, and Winston stood holding a lone leftover package.

“Well, this one’s Hanzo’s, but...”

“It’s from me,” Genji interrupted. “I will give it to him. But that means that somebody got something from him, right?”

“It looks like it,” Winston said, double-checking under the tree. “Everybody’s got something, right? Well, uh, I guess we can figure it out by process of elimination. Okay, Athena, who gets to open first?”

The glowing blue _A_ on the TV screen blinked gently as their impartial judge made her random selection.

“Agent McCree,” she said a few seconds later, punctuated by Jesse’s “ _all right”_ and Genji’s “ _damn._ ”

Satya sat stiffly on the couch with the gift bag on her lap and Fareeha’s head resting on her shoulder. She was a patient woman, but curiosity was burning through her and a glimpse inside had offered nothing but tissue paper. So she sat, bouncing one leg as McCree opened his collection of vintage Westerns from Winston; as Doctor Ziegler tried on the stunning white faux-fur hat and gloves Mei-Ling had gotten her; as Genji tried out the dry-erase markers Fareeha had gotten him for his own metal plating. The entire room burst into laughter when the cyborg drew on a broad smile and large round eyes. Even Doctor Ziegler, normally so composed, was reduced to snorting into her cup until her face turned red.

And then the next name Athena read out was Satya’s own, and the eyes of the room were on her. She took a breath, slightly uncomfortable with the attention even as casual a setting as this, and pulled apart the ribbon holding the bag’s handles closed. Then came the tissue paper, and then she was holding a folded jacket.

She held it upright for a proper look. The windbreaker was royal blue with golden accents. The circular logo of Overwatch was emblazoned on the left breast and on the back.

“Is that—Mom, is that—” Fareeha began. Satya lowered the jacket to look over at where Ana sat, inscrutable.

“It’s one of mine, yes,” she said. “I think it was...twenty-sixty? Sixty-two? Sorry to give you my cast-offs, Ms. Vaswani, but I only wore it a handful of times for photo ops.”

Satya studied the garment again with newfound respect. Regalia from the original Overwatch would undoubtedly fetch an astronomical price if she had any interest in selling it.

“Oh, before I forget. There’s diamene sewn into the lining. It’s bulletproof, though I would advise against testing it.”

“Thank you very much,” Satya said slowly, wondering if the question she was about to ask was rude. “Can I ask why—?”

Ana chuckled and looked away. “You deserve it. You’re more Overwatch now than I am. And I thought it would suit you.”

Satya was very aware of everyone looking at her. Fareeha was no longer smiling. Her face was serious as she looked between Satya and the jacket. Self-conscious, Satya unzipped it and slid her arms into the sleeves. It fit very well, just loose enough to be comfortable.

“It does suit you,” Fareeha murmured. Satya felt her face grow warm.

And even as Athena read out the next name and the group’s attentions moved on, she was aware of how Ana Amari’s eye remained fixed on the pair of them.

* * *

She had told herself that she would escape the party after an hour or so, stay for the gift exchange and then head back to her room to herald the new year with a cup of strong tea and an early retirement to bed, but it was fifteen minutes to midnight and there she still was, standing on the terrace and nursing a mug of hot cocoa. As a celebration she’d allowed herself to add a shot of bourbon. She’d been so good about sobriety while on the run, but there was something about this place and this company that made it difficult. Something about Overwatch.

Maybe it was just that when she was constantly moving, she didn’t need the alcohol to distract her. Now she was tied down.

“Happy New Year, Captain Amari.”

She hadn’t heard the cyborg approaching her. His mechanical limbs moved almost silently. Even his footsteps were light.

“It’s not the new year yet, and I’m not captain of anything anymore.”

She glanced over at him and was taken off-guard; he’d drawn a shaggy beard onto his chin. Fareeha’s markers were already getting plenty of mileage. A good gift.

“My apologies. Old habits are hard to break.”

“I never _was_ your captain, Mister Shimada,” she said wryly.

“No, but people talked about you. Commander Reyes. McCree. I feel I’ve come to know you through them.”

Her breath stuttered in her throat. She had come to terms with being a ghost, but she had not thought much about that. About being missed enough that her comrades would tell stories. She had thought of the gulf she left in Fareeha’s life but little about other people. It would have been too much to think of the other people too.

Gabriel flashed into her mind as he had been. Smiling. Grimacing. Shooting. Laughing. Human. One of her closest friends. Now he was a ghost of an entirely different kind from her. Overwatch’s dead could never stay buried.

Shimada cleared his throat, a sound made odd by the electronic modulation of his voice.

“Doctor Ziegler talked about you too.”

Her mood shifted at once. No longer sadness but scorn, nausea, guilt. She looked over her shoulder through the windows of the common room. Angela was talking to Zhou and nursing what had to be her fourth glass of wine. Her cheeks were flushed from the alcohol. She was smiling.

So pretty. Always so pretty.

“Did she.”

“Were you two close?”

The question rankled. Ana looked at him, but the faceplate made it impossible to determine anything. There was just the steady green glow and the foolish drawn-on beard.

“Why do you ask?”

“It just seemed odd for her to talk about you. Since you were combat and she was medical, I didn’t think there would be much overlap.”

He sounded so innocent. Ana looked away from him, over the dark cliffs, the ocean.

“I taught her to shoot. She wanted to go in the field, so she needed training.”

“Was she a good shot?”

Ana paused. She was feeling more uneasy by the moment. She needed to know _what_ he knew and _how_ he knew it, but any question would be an admission of the truth.

“She was an awful shot,” she said shortly, and turned to go inside.

“Hey, hey!”

Jesse forestalled her. He was clearly drunk and swaying on the spot, but he managed to put a hand on her shoulder.

“You can’t leave now; it’s almost midnight. Winston’s got champagne—”

_Crack._

It happened in an instant. Her brain was still processing the sound when she felt something warm splatter across her face. Jesse was falling. Jesse was on the ground.

“McCree!” Genji bellowed. “We’re under attack!”

Suddenly everything was noise as the people inside realized what had happened, as they looked outside and saw Jesse collapsed.

“What the—?”

“Jesse!”

“Where did it—?”

Ana dropped to her knees. He was breathing, but blood was bubbling out of the corner of his mouth. The shot had hit him in the right side of his chest. His lung was undoubtedly punctured. Ana cupped his throat as if holding onto his pulse and tried not to let the panic rise too high within her.

“On the comm tower!” Genji again. “I’ll give chase—”

Angela was suddenly _there,_ her cheeks still rosy but her face stiff and her jaw clenched. She swept her hair up into a messy ponytail and bent over Jesse, brushing away Ana’s hand to feel his heartbeat for herself.

“We need to get him to the medical bay _now._ ”

“You didn’t bring your staff?” The words came out harsher than Ana intended them, but she could hardly care when a friend was bleeding out under her hands.

“To the _New Year’s party_?” Angela retorted. Her face was twisted in anger and only then did Ana regret snapping. “Where’s your rifle?”

“Everyone, _be quiet!_ ”

A new voice cut sharply over the ruckus. Ana did not have to look up to know Fareeha had joined them on the terrace. The new Overwatch’s Strike Commander taking up the mantle.

“Someone’s looped the security footage and hacked the drones; that’s why Athena didn’t set off an alarm. Hanzo reported a sniper on the comm tower and gave chase—”

_Hanzo?_

“Genji, you join him. Winston and Angela, get McCree to the medbay. Everyone else, partner up and get your gear; we’re patrolling manually.”

Fareeha’s eyes were wide but her face was determined. She looked around at them with her jaw stubbornly set. Ana looked at her and could almost see Jack in her silhouette. The picture of calm amidst chaos. The leader they had chosen.

The pain went through Ana like she’d taken a shot herself. She obeyed willingly enough, heading for her room for rifle and grenades, but the image did not leave her mind. She wondered how much longer Fareeha had before the target painted on her left her nothing more than a corpse, or before she turned out like Commander Morrison, empty and weighed down by ghosts and on the run.

She wondered which fate was worse.

* * *

Two hours later Ana dragged herself to the medbay to check on Jesse. Their search had been fruitless; every inch of Watchpoint: Gibraltar was as it should have been. No sign of their assailant. Hanzo reported he’d given chase but the sniper had grappled up the cliffs faster than he could climb. No doubt a Talon dropship had been waiting nearby to whisk the Widowmaker, if it really had been her, away again.

What a way to ring in the New Year.

After they’d all reported back, Fareeha had dismissed them for bed. Zenyatta and Bastion had offered to keep watch until the holes in Athena’s system were patched. It was probably a violation of some omnic bill of rights, but Ana was too exhausted to object or offer herself up instead. One of the more frustrating things to watch herself lose with age was the ability to stay awake as late and as long as she used to be able to.

But she needed at least to see Jesse, to be sure he was stable, and then she could sleep.

Why the sudden Talon attack? Why just the Widowmaker landing a non-lethal shot when she undoubtedly could have taken her pick of their heads? It didn’t make sense.

Angela was sitting in a chair at Jesse’s bedside with her head in her hands, but she jerked up when Ana entered. Her eyes were wide. Fearful.

“How is he?”

“All right. For now. The nanobes are working on his lung, and I’ve given him a sedative to get him through the night. That’s not—he’s not—Ana—”

She swallowed hard and shook her head. Ana looked down at where her hands were gripped together so tightly her knuckles were white.

“What is wrong with you?”

“I know why they attacked.”

“You _what_? You couldn’t have mentioned that at the debrief?”

“You’re the only one who _knows about it_ ,” Angela said through gritted teeth, and then Ana understood, but understanding brought with it not relief but a weight settling forcibly onto her shoulders.

She dragged up a second chair and seated herself on the other side of the slumbering McCree. The two women stared at each other across his prone body as the secret dangled in the air between them.

“Your _resurrection_ tech.”

“The Folkvangr,” Angela corrected automatically.

“Why do you think they were after it?”

“Reaper must have—”

“ _Gabriel—_ ”

“—must have told Talon something. He suspected it was me, you know that. Some sort of tech. I didn’t think he’d want to _steal—_ I didn’t think—”

“ _Focus,_ Angela.”

“Right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

She shook her head again. Her face was shadowed. When she was tired like this was the only time she even began to look her age.

“After I stabilized him I went back to my room to change clothes, but they’d—someone had been in there, Ana, gone through my things, moved things, pulled out the drawers. They took the Valkyrie and the Caduceus.”

An adequate understanding of what Angela was saying began to dawn on Ana. The technology that had been so repugnant just to think of, fallen into Talon’s hands. More like Gabriel—like the Reaper. Perhaps an army just like him.

She did not want to ask, but she needed to ask.

“Did they get it?”

And then the breath was entering her lungs again and her heartbeat seemed to steady as Angela shook her head. The relief swept over her.

“Not this time.”

“Then why the long face?”

“They took my _suit._ There’s data in that, readouts from all our recent missions, everyone’s readings, everyone’s _genes—_ and we can build another, sure, but how long will that take? How do we report this to the UN? How did they get in here? Athena couldn’t protect us. Talon has more resources and manpower than we’ll ever have, and they don’t have the restriction of the law to worry about. Jesse will live, this time. But there will be another time, and another time, until we’re all gone.

“We’re flailing in the dark and if Talon wanted annihilation tonight, they could have gotten it.”

The scene was so nostalgic. Ana remembered Gabriel’s infinite rants about the futility of Overwatch. She had listened to him and quietly agreed most of the time. She didn’t disagree now. There was a reason she had not allowed herself to be properly reinstated as an agent, aside from the complications of the UN still believing her to be dead. She was not sure what the point of Overwatch was any longer. She was certain she did not agree with recall.

But a commander did not tell her troops that the future was dark and their actions were meaningless. She did not let them drown in despair and question their own worlds.

Angela’s head was hanging, but it jerked upward when Ana reached across the bed to place a hand on her shoulder.

“I think you’re forgetting something, _Engel._ ”

Angela raised her eyebrows in a silent question. The harsh medbay lights glittered in her too-bright eyes.

“They did not get annihilation tonight. They did not even get what they wanted. None of us are dead yet. So before you think of giving up, remember that Jesse is counting on you, and so is everyone else.”

Angela’s lips twitched upward, but the smile failed to reach her eyes. She was no longer the young woman she had been, Ana supposed. She was no longer swayed so easily by platitudes. Now she had seen combat, seen death. Hope was a more difficult thing after that.

“So how long do we have until one of us dies, then?”

“Wasn’t your Folkvangr supposed to answer that question?”

She said it wryly, mostly in jest, but Angela’s eyes narrowed and anger curled her mouth down. She shrugged away from Ana’s hand.

“For God’s sake, Ana, have you never made a mistake?”

She had made many mistakes, none of which she wanted to relive in this room with the woman sitting across from her. And though none of hers were as theatrical as reanimating the dead, she didn’t doubt that her own choices had been far more catastrophic than Angela’s.

The weight of a crumbled ruin in Zurich still rested on her shoulders.

“I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have—I shouldn’t have said that.”

Angela looked away.

“It’s late,” she said. “I should get to bed.”

Ana understood the dismissal. It prickled under her skin. She wanted to reach across McCree’s bed again and try to offer more words of comfort. She wanted Angela to smile up at her.

But she was tired too, and she didn’t have any words left, so she stood and slowly headed for the door. She could almost feel Angela’s eyes boring into her back, but she didn’t turn to look.

* * *

“I should have been here,” Hana announced to the table at large. “My MEKA could’ve caught up to that sniper.”

She had been the last of them to return from vacation, and so for the first time in nearly a month they had all gathered for dinner as a team. Reinhardt and Satya had worked together to prepare a feast for them all. A glance around told Genji that many of the others were lacking an appetite, but he wasn’t one of them. It was nice to eat properly again after subsisting on microwave dinners for the past handful of weeks.

Even Hanzo had joined them, an event without precedent. He had declined Genji’s offer to sit beside him in favor of joining Torbjörn by the window. All this time away from the clan and his habits were still the same: a refusal to be surrounded, a wall against his back, a view of the whole room.

But joining them for dinner was better than nothing at all.

“Nobody could have caught her. We were ambushed and they were prepared,” Fareeha said, unsmiling. “We need to be prepared for the next time.”

“A cowardly attack,” Reinhardt boomed. “We will make Talon pay.”

“But why’d they bother attacking at all if they were just gonna run?” Lúcio chimed in. “Half of us were gone. If they wanted an opening they couldn’t have found a better one. Why just McCree?”

That was the question they had all been asking. Talon undoubtedly had the means to stage a much grander attack, and the Widowmaker seemed to have almost missed on purpose. Genji was left with the nagging feeling that they were all missing something important.

He glanced down the table to see Angela staring at her lap. Across from her Ana’s eye bored into the doctor, unwavering and cold.

Something important indeed.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Jesse said. “I’m the biggest threat here.”

His shoulder was heavily bandaged and his arm was in a sling, but he’d bounced back well from his recent brush with Talon. Genji had seen him recover from far worse in the old days. He still had the occasional nightmare about Venice, the gunfire of a heavy assault unit ringing in his head while Reyes or Jesse or Moira fell to the onslaught—

“Come on,” Lena snorted. “Before Fareeha? Yeah, right.”

“Oh, yeah? Who’s landed more elims on her in simulations than anyone else here? That’s right, I have.” Jesse puffed out his chest and looked up and down the table as if daring anyone to intervene.

“If we’re going by that, I’ve taken you out plenty,” Lena retorted. “That’s a lousy way to measure. In a one-on-one, my money’s on Fareeha any day.”

Fareeha was shaking her head and trying to suppress a smile.

“Okay, you noobs,” Hana interrupted, “there’s an obvious way to resolve this. Athena keeps aggregate scores of simulation performance and training statistics, doesn’t she? Winston?”

“Er, well, yes,” Winston said, jumping at being addressed directly. “But I don’t know if this is—”

Hana’s communicator was in her hand before Winston could finish his sentence.

“Athena! Who’s got the high score?”

Hana wore a triumphant grin. Angela had looked up. Even Hanzo was leaning in.

“According to the most recent available data, the registered agent with the best record, averaging both damage dealt, damage received, and accuracy is—”

The blue _A_ on the screen gently pulsed for a few seconds. Genji stopped chewing to listen.

“—Agent Mei.”

There were a few seconds of bewildered silence. Lena was caught with her mouth open and her brow furrowed. Jesse looked similarly like someone had pulled the carpet out from under him.

“Okay, _what_?” Hana exclaimed. “No offense, Mei, but _what?_ ”

At the far end of the table, seated across from Hanzo, Mei-Ling offered a sheepish grin. Her cheeks looked a little pink.

“I’ve been working on my aim. And I’ve made some tweaks to improve my blaster’s range. But I’m sure in a real fight any one of you could take me down!”

He _had_ been the unfortunate victim of that endothermic blaster a few times during their last combat simulation, Genji recalled, and the ice could even freeze Bastion. His father, long dead, had liked to preach about how the most innocent-looking things were often the most deadly.

He’d have to pay more attention next time, Genji concluded, as the dinnertime discussion devolved into Jesse and Lena bickering while Hana made angry inquiries into Athena’s methods of score calculation.

After dinner, Genji made his way outside to where he knew he would find his brother. Even in the winter months, Hanzo had persisted in his habit of sitting outside on the cliffs and watching the water below. He had found his own little cranny in the rocks, to the side of the compound where he was unlikely to be disturbed. It was a climb that would be treacherous for the average person, but the Shimadas made it with ease.

“What do you want, Genji.”

Hanzo didn’t bother looking up. He was holding a steaming mug of tea, though the night air was so mild it seemed hardly necessary.

“You were at dinner tonight.”

Hanzo grunted.

“What of it.”

“Oh, come on, brother. You’ve spent the past five months skulking around and now you show up to team dinner. Finally feel like socializing?”

The constant crease between his brother’s eyebrows sharpened, and Genji worried he’d teased too much. Hanzo was always a taut wire, poised to snap. Genji had entertained himself during childhood by deliberately crossing the lines.

_Not so perfect after all, eh, Hanzo—?_

He settled himself cross-legged onto the rocks. Hanzo shifted a few centimeters as if to make room. He did not make a cold retort or depart, both good signs.

Genji took in several breaths of the air. Perhaps someday Hanzo would feel comfortable joining him and McCree in their evening reminiscences. Perhaps someday he would be willing to meditate on the rocks with Zenyatta and Bastion. The gaps between them did not seem so large when they all shared a love of watching the ocean churn against the cliffs. Who could be angry with the sea spread out before them and a cool breeze stirring the air?

Then again, the serene view had hardly dampened the enthusiasm of their unwelcome visitors a week ago.

After a few moments, he realized he smelled not just salt on the air, but the grassy fragrance of Hanzo’s tea.

“The guricha?”

“Yes,” Hanzo muttered. “Thank you for it.”

Genji shrugged. “You always liked it.”

“When we were boys.”

Genji said nothing. He did not think he needed to remind Hanzo for the reason why he was not up-to-date on his brother’s tea preferences. That reminder, after all, lived in every facet of this place, of his body and his voice.

“Thank you for remembering,” Hanzo said, more gruffly. Underneath his visor, where Hanzo could not see, Genji smiled.

“Of course.”

“I thought there would be battle preparations. A plan of attack, of ramping up defenses—something,” Hanzo burst out. “That there would be serious discussions of our safety here, and that as a—resident—I should participate. That is why I attended dinner.

“But there was nothing! Just—jokes and meaningless chatter. Even that buffoon, the cowboy, was laughing as if he was not wounded. These people are amateurs, and yet they play at being heroes. They will— _we_ will all perish.”

“Hanzo, you underestimate them. Hana—”

“An _idol,_ a _celebrity—_ ”

“A _soldier._ A strategist. Probably seen more combat than either of us. Definitely fought more omnics. Fareeha—”

“An untested idealist.”

“Untested? She’s military too, and Helix after that, and she was _raised_ by Overwatch. And McCree—”

“A buffoon.”

“Sure, he has that air to him. He plays the idiot. But he’s also a marksman to rival you—yes, really—and he has saved my life in the field more times than I can count. I will rely on him. I will rely on any of them.”

Hanzo fell silent, his mouth stretched into a stubborn line.

Genji recalled his conversation with McCree, so recent and yet seeming like it had taken place ages ago. His brother and the gunslinger were not so different, after all.

Hanzo had lived the past decade of his life alone and on the run, picking off members of the fallen Shimada-gumi until he, the lost scion, became a target of the underworld. Even before then, even when the family was at the peak of its power, nowhere was safe. A friend could become an enemy with the right persuasion. Their father had taught them that. Keep one hand outstretched and keep a weapon in the other. Even a brother was a foe.

It was difficult to unlearn a lifetime of habits. It had been difficult enough for Genji, who had eschewed the clan’s strict teachings. For Hanzo it was undoubtedly much more so.

“Look,” Genji said at last, “I know it’s not what you’re used to. But you can trust these people, Hanzo. There was no discussion of tactics tonight because there will be one tomorrow. Fareeha—Strike Commander Amari—called a meeting for tomorrow morning. And you should come.”

Hanzo looked at him and away again. He took a long draw from his cup.

“What time?”

“Ten.”

Hanzo sighed.

“I will attend.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you for telling me of it.”

For several moments they were both quiet. The conversation had lasted longer than almost any Genji’d had with his brother since that fateful night of their reunion in Hanamura. It felt good to talk to him again, to feel the wall between them lower if only by a little.

“Is that all?” Hanzo finally asked. Genji crossed his legs easily into half-lotus, indicating he had no intentions of leaving so soon.

“Actually, I wanted to know what you were doing the night of the attack.”

Hanzo frowned.

“As I have told you and the others, I was here. I was drinking. There is nothing more to say.”

“Yes, there is. Come on, Hanzo. You’ve always been an awful liar.”

“You call me a liar?”

“Look.”

Genji gestured to his side. From where they were sitting, nestled on the cliffs, there was only the faintest hint of the structure dug out into the rock. The stairs up into the hangar was just visible, but other than that the rock face appeared undisturbed.

“You can’t see anything from here. You want me to believe that you heard the shot, climbed all the way back, saw the sniper, and pursued before anyone else could respond? While drinking?”

“You all were also drinking, as I recall.”

“And how would you know that?”

“It is a fair assumption—”

“Just admit it. You weren’t down here. You were closer. You were watching.”

Hanzo stewed silently for a few seconds before tersely responding.

“Someone needed to be alert.”

“Come off it! You were watching the party and it was not because _someone needed to be alert,_ ” Genji laughed, unable to help himself. He didn’t want to make Hanzo more reluctant to talk, but the image of his brother sitting in the dark and watching through the windows was too amusing to let go. “Where were you, really?”

Hanzo lifted his empty mug to his lips, discovered it was empty, scowled, and set it down again.

“...Near the antennas. By the comm tower.”

“You couldn’t see much from there,” Genji said, mentally estimating the distance in his mind.

Hanzo sighed, closed his eyes, and shook his head. Genji recognized these signs of his brother’s irritation, but he was much too interested now to let the subject drop.

“Binoculars.”

“Bino—!”

Genji couldn’t resist from letting loose a shout of laughter. His voice echoed off the rock walls and the roiling water below them. A flock of seabirds nesting on the cliffs took flight, squawking at the disturbance. Genji didn’t have to glance to the side to know his brother was glowering.

“You could have just _come,_ you know, instead of spying on us.”

“To what end? I see how they look at me. The doctor. The knight. They look at me and see a murderer.”

Hanzo turned his head sharply away, and his next words were muttered quickly. But Genji heard them nonetheless.

“...as they should.”

“They cannot see you as anything else if you do not make the first step. Perhaps it will take them time to trust you, but they never will if you spend all your time sulking in your room and avoiding contact.”

“Is that why you brought me here? To ingratiate myself with _children_ playing at heroism?”

“I brought you here because I thought purpose would help you. I thought you could make a difference. If I was wrong in that assumption, you are welcome to go.”

Genji stood. He had worn out his welcome, and as always with his brother, he could sense when an argument was oncoming. Even after so much time and the transformations they had both undergone, their clashes persisted.

_Just like when we were boys._

“Wait. Ms. Zhou—did she—how did she—?”

Beneath his visor, Genji’s face softened.

“She loved it, Hanzo.”

He could remember how Mei-Ling’s expression had shifted from curiosity to surprise to something he had never seen there before as she unwrapped the photo album and flipped from one page to another. Genji had only caught a few glimpses of the pictures it contained, but they had been enough to tell him all he needed to know. They were pictures of Mei-Ling and other people wearing white coats emblazoned with Overwatch’s insignia. Smiling. Laughing. Working. In some grinning at the camera; in others busy at work.

The ice had failed to preserve their lives, but the film had succeeded. And as Mei-Ling had looked around the common room to see who to thank for the little book, they had all seen the tears gleaming in her eyes.

“Good. The AI assisted me—I know little about any of the people here, but since you forced me to participate—”

“So you won’t talk to any people here, but you’ll talk to Athena?”

Hanzo paused, then shook his head again. This time Genji saw his lips twitch upward ever so slightly before he quelled the smile.

“Good night, Genji.”

“Good night, brother,” Genji said, and left him to his quiet observation.

* * *

They had convened in this briefing room for mission discussions before, but never before had Angela been so nervous. All seats of the oval-shaped table were more or less equally exposed, but she had chosen one near the corner of the room anyway. Mei, always punctual, was occupying the chair on her left and speaking enthusiastically of research ideas. Angela was glad for the distraction, but it did little to stem the tide of her anxiety.

Ten o’clock drew steadily closer and closer and the seats filled. Winston moved two chairs out of the way to settle himself on the floor near the far door. Fareeha and Satya arrived. Angela couldn’t fail to notice Fareeha’s arm gently wrapped about Satya’s waist. Nor could she identify the emotion the sight triggered in her.

Hanzo appeared in the doorway at exactly five minutes to ten, looking stiff and out of place. He chose a seat next to Winston; Angela suspected his choice was based on the proximity of the door.

Ana came in with Torbjörn and Reinhardt, but hesitated before seating herself. Angela met her eyes and leaned her head toward the vacant chair on her right. Ana gave the smallest of nods and moved to join her.

The table filled. Even Bastion wandered in, shunning a chair in favor of sitting in the corner behind her. She wished he wouldn’t have; having a constantly armed and dangerous omnic right behind her was hardly soothing. Her heart was already pounding in her throat. She looked around at everyone, at the new Overwatch, and wondered what they would think of her in an hour.

At precisely ten, Fareeha stood and the chatter died down. She glanced around the table.

“That’s everyone, right? Okay, thank you all for coming. We need to discuss our directions going forward.”

She cleared her throat and shifted from one foot to the other. It occurred to Angela that this was the newly-appointed Strike Commander’s first time leading a meeting in this capacity. She glanced at Ana on her right, wondering what she was thinking of seeing her daughter in this position, but the older woman’s face was inscrutable.

“I wanted to hear from everyone. I want us all to have a say in this. I may be—Strike Commander, but each of you has valuable experience and insights and opinions. I don’t want to force us down a road that we aren’t all comfortable with. I want all of you to know what is happening and why.”

Ana looked away, her mouth a thin line. The other members of the old guard wore similar expressions. The reminder that they were rebuilding on the ashes of the old Overwatch was an unwelcome reminder, however necessary.

“First, about the attack. Talon has taken notice of us. We need to up our defenses. This wasn’t the worst outcome. We can learn where we’re weak and build stronger, and we didn’t have to pay much for it.”

“Feels like a lot!” Jesse stage-whispered, theatrically rubbing at his shoulder. Mei-Ling gave a polite laugh; Fareeha ignored him.

“Winston, you’ve been running diagnostics on Athena’s systems, right? Have you found anything yet?”

“Oh! Uh.” Winston shifted in place and looked owlishly around the table. “I think we’ve isolated the weak points in her firewalls where the hacker broke in. But if we’re dealing with someone really skilled, it’s gonna be hard to know for sure whether our defenses are strong enough. So I’m going to try to install some lower-tech defenses, stuff that isn’t networked...”

Angela was trying very hard to focus on what was being said, but Winston’s words were going in one ear and coming out the other. It took all her effort just to keep from hyperventilating. On her left, Mei was leaning forward and listening intently. Before the meeting had started she had asked Angela how she was, if she’d had a chance to wear the gloves and hat yet. Angela had been meaning to talk to her more, to spend more time with her. It was a resolution she’d had since rejoining Overwatch and discovering the scientist was not, in fact, dead. But she hadn’t done it, and now she was wondering if Mei would ever even look at her again after she said what she intended to say. If any of them would.

She remembered the disgust on Ana’s face. She had deserved it. She hadn’t heeded Ana’s warnings.

But if she had, she wouldn’t have survived to sit at this table, would she?

Too soon Winston had finished. Torbjörn stood to add his perspective on the base’s defenses; and then Zenyatta was adding that he would gladly continue nightly patrols, to which Bastion chirped agreement; and then Fareeha was speaking again and gesturing toward Angela.

“Doctor Ziegler said she had something to say regarding the attack, so—the floor’s yours, Angela.”

The women on either side of her were looking at her, Mei curious, Ana suddenly sharp-eyed and serious. Angela tried not to look at either of them. She pushed her chair back and stood and wondered if she would even be able to hear herself over the pounding in her ears.

All of them were looking at her. Winston. Fareeha. Satya. Even Bastion’s head was cocked in her direction.

She closed her eyes.

“I believe I know why Talon attacked.”

“What—”

That was Fareeha, surely, but other voices followed. Angela raised her voice to drown them out.

“I apologize for not speaking up sooner, but I assure you this information is not of immediate relevance. I delayed because I have told next to nobody about this over the past decade, and silence is a hard habit to break.”

She forced herself to open her eyes. Fareeha was frowning, appearing indignant. Jesse was stony-faced. She looked from one person to another and didn’t know if she could continue speaking.

But when she looked down to her right and met Ana’s gaze, the older woman gave her a tiny nod, and she found the words again.

“Early on in my research with Overwatch and biotic healing and regeneration, I began to ask a certain question. Not a unique question, but perhaps I was uniquely poised to ask it. With the progress that had been made in the medical community, and the advances I saw in my own experiments, I—”

She was rambling, she knew, trying to justify it. She forced herself to swallow and take a deep breath. She could feel the words sticking in her throat as if they were physically there.

“I began research on the regeneration of life. On the possibility of recovery from fatal injuries. Resurrection.”

The room was silent. She found the ceiling very interesting.

“I was amazed by the success my trial runs saw. I began work on rats and other lab animals to great success. It was a natural extension of biotic healing.

“I did not—write reports on my research, except for my own use. I did not tell—anyone about it. Even then I think I knew...I think my conscience was trying to tell me.”

She did not look at Ana. She could not look at Ana.

“During the Null Sector uprising in King’s Row, I was part of the strike team sent to deal with the hostage situation. I brought the technology with me, built into my suit. I did not expect to need it. I did not intend to use it. But whatever my intentions—I found myself at the epicenter of a detonator’s blast. I should have died. I did—I believe I did die. It brought me back.”

“Angela—!”

“You mean to tell me you died on King’s Row?”

Torbjörn was leaning forward, scowling even more than usual, his hands drawn into fists on the table. Lena and Reinhardt likewise looked shocked, bewildered. The confusion was echoed in faces all around the table. Satya was frowning intensely. Lúcio leaned over to whisper something in Hana’s ear.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” Angela began, holding up her hands as if to placate them.

“A lot to take in! That was a decade ago and you’re trying to tell us the mission wasn’t what we thought? That you died and came back and we just kept going like it was nothing? You couldn’t have bothered to tell us?”

She could hardly meet Torbjörn’s eyes. He looked too angry. Panic was rising in her throat again. Soon they would all look at her like that. Soon they would all be yelling.

“I suppose that’s just another secret we have to deal with. All our commanders are alive after all, and Gérard was murdered by his own wife, and none of us know what’s going on—!”

“Torbjörn!” Reinhardt’s voice drowned out the engineer’s. His brow was furrowed, but in contrast to Torbjörn’s anger, he looked sad. “That is enough. Let her speak. Do you want to know the truth or not?”

“It would have been nice to know the truth when it happened,” Torbjörn grumbled, but he settled back down.

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Angela said, as if the words made any difference. They were sticking in her throat again—no, that was just a lump, but she couldn’t cry. Not here. Not now. “It took me ages to believe it myself. I was afraid and I didn’t understand—”

“Hold up,” Lena interrupted. “You said you knew why Talon attacked, and now you’re telling us about this—are you saying that Talon stole it? You saying that Talon can resurrect people now?”

Suddenly everyone seemed to be talking at once. All Angela could hear was the dull roar in her ears. She wanted to get out of the room, to _run,_ to jump into the sea where it would be cool and quiet and none of them could look at her as they were doing now.

The chair next to her scraped back. Ana stood close enough that their shoulders brushed.

“ _Quiet,_ all of you.”

Ana’s voice was not loud, but it cut through the room effectively enough. An uneasy silence settled. Angela’s gaze rested on Hanzo, who was glaring at her and looking positively murderous. Torbjörn was still scowling.

She deserved it all, every last dirty look.

“They did not get it. Please—you can say whatever you like to me, you can ask me anything, but let me finish. It’s not just King’s Row. It’s—Torbjörn, what you said before.”

He squinted at her, uncomprehending. The rest of the table appeared similarly confused. She swallowed. Already she had said so much, but still there was more.

“Our commanders. After...after the explosion in Zurich, my position as head of medical research allowed me to view and inspect the remains alongside the UN’s team. For Jack there were only—pieces. Just DNA evidence, really. Maybe that should have made us suspect, but we thought he had been near the center of the blast. But Reyes—Gabriel—his body was there.

“I regret it. It was a foolish and impulsive decision. But with him there in front of me, and everything that had happened, I felt I had to at least _try._

“And try I did, but it didn’t—take. There were very faint delta waves at first, and a stimulation of blood and the heartbeat, but it faded. I thought that perhaps it was too long from the time of death. But it appeared to fail. He remained in the morgue and we buried the body, but—”

Her voice broke. She could almost see him there before her. He had been cold to the touch. She had seen so many corpses, but his had remained more clearly in her mind than any of the rest. Dead, unquestionably dead, until two months ago and an abandoned warehouse in Dorado where he’d resurfaced and held a shotgun to her head and turned her world upside down.

“I can’t say exactly what happened. But I will say that whatever he is now, the responsibility rests with me. I made the Reaper.”

Jesse was looking at her with his expression caught between suspicion and disbelief. She couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t stand Mei’s furrowed brow, or Reinhardt, bewildered, or Winston blinking and mouthing silently.

“He knows that. The night of the attack, my room was disturbed. They took the Valkyrie suit and my staff. But they did not get— _that._ ”

The silence was unbearably heavy. The lump in her throat was swelling. Too late she realized her eyes were watering, and then there was nothing for it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, to none of them and all of them, and then she was bolting for the door before the tears could spill over and stain her even more.


	2. Kyrie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lord have mercy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long gap! I have a "real" job now. If you'll allow me some navel-gazing, dear readers, I first began writing (bad) fanfiction about ten years ago. I was in middle school at the time. And here I am, a college graduate with a job and an apartment and a slew of emotional issues, still writing fanfiction. Hopefully it's better now than it was then, though.
> 
> I hope you enjoy, and I hope the next one won't take too long.

Angela’s usually neat-but-cluttered room was more of a mess than Ana had ever seen it. It was as if she hadn’t bothered cleaning up at all after the Talon attack. Perhaps she’d spent as little time as possible in it since the party, as if the space itself was an uncomfortable reminder for her.

Ana started with the pile of clean laundry on the desk. Angela had apparently found the time to wash her clothes and fold them, but the final step had evaded her. It was very little effort to put them away in her dresser. Ana left the pretty white hat and gloves from Mei-Ling sitting out, unsure where to put them. Underneath the clothes was a mess of papers, which she was less comfortable attempting to organize. She settled for simply straightening them into a pile. One wrinkled page resisted her guiding hands and she pulled it from the stack.

It had been sitting there for a while, if the water stain and creases were any indication. The ink hadn’t run badly enough to obscure the words, though. It looked like a printout of some online article; _Die Lauterbrunnenszeit_ was emblazoned in bold at the top of the page.

The picture dominating the center of the paper needed no translation. It appeared to be a selfie, a man and a woman beaming up at the camera. They were both wearing sunglasses. The woman had very pale blonde hair, while the man’s looked auburn in the light.

 _Frau und Herr Ziegler,_ the caption read.

Ana frowned. Her German was rusty and never good enough in the first place, but she scanned the article. _Angela Ziegler,_ mentioned multiple times throughout. Other names. Places she recognized. Stray words she knew but were little help understanding the rest.

It occurred to her that Metis— _Athena_ could translate, but then her conscience caught up to her. She was perhaps invading Angela’s privacy enough already by being in her room without permission and going through her things. Whatever this article was, and Ana had a fairly decent idea, it was none of her business.

She set it back on the desk and reshuffled her pile to hide the article while curiosity beat a dull drum beat in the back of her head.

She had stolen Angela’s research. She had disappeared for a decade and let her think she was dead. She had disregarded her feelings and hurt her too many times to keep count. But now reading an article was a boundary she wouldn’t cross?

It was guilt. The same guilt that had surfaced when Angela confronted her about her rifle, when they’d exchanged terse words over Jesse’s unconscious body in the medbay. It had come to a head when she saw Angela standing beside her in the conference room, hands and voice trembling. She hadn’t been expecting it, hardly knew how to react. She had been the only other person in the room who knew, but she had sat quiet and judgmental just like the rest of them. Angela had faced them all alone and told the truth, and they could all see the effort it took. A secret for longer than Ana had pretended to be dead.

A secret no more.

When Angela had fled the conference room, the meeting devolved into predictable chaos. Fareeha made a few cursory attempts to steer them back toward productivity, but with Angela gone and the rest of them so distracted it was clearly a lost effort.

Ana had sat, watching everybody else, feeling like a ghost among the other agents. Probably the right thing to do would have been to find Angela. But she remembered their arguments and wondered whether she would be any comfort at all, and so she had just sat, stagnant and waiting for someone to impel her to motion.

Torbjörn had eventually gone after Angela, followed by Reinhardt and Lena. The rest of them had slowly dispersed, with Fareeha telling them they needed to convene the next day at the same time.

Ana had remained sitting. She wasn’t sure what else to do. The others had filed out in muttering clumps. Mei-Ling Zhou also stayed seated, looking more somber than Ana had ever seen her.

“Do you think Angela—Doctor Ziegler—will be all right?” she had asked.

“Of course she will be,” Ana had said with unearned confidence. “The telling is the hardest part.”

“Is it?” Mei-Ling had asked. Before Ana could answer, the scientist too was scraping her chair back and giving her an apologetic smile before leaving the room, and then she wondered if the question had been rhetorical after all.

And now it was hours later, and neither Angela nor the trio who’d gone after her had reported back. According to Athena she had gone off-base. It was long enough now that Ana was beginning, almost, to worry. She did not think Angela would run, but then she had not expected her to speak up during the meeting at all.

The thought that crept over her was jarring and uncomfortable. She settled herself onto Angela’s unmade bed and stared blankly at the opposite wall. The room smelled of her, and Angela’s scent hadn’t changed. Floral lotion and perfume that wasn’t quite enough to mask the sterile, chemical smell of the medbay. And sweat, too—the sheets needed washing.

Angela Ziegler smelled the same. She looked the same. As frustrating as their reunion had been, there was something comfortable in that too. But now Ana found herself wondering if the decade apart had changed Angela more than she saw, if the woman who appeared unchanged had grown into someone else after all.

Jack was out there, a shell of a man fighting a losing battle, and Gabriel too, and here she was cooped up on a base with people she no longer knew and whom she would never know.

 _Why did you drag me back here,_ she wanted to scream at Angela. She wanted to dig her fingers into her slim shoulders and shake her until she wasn’t frustrated any longer, until Angela looked properly apologetic. _How can you be so selfish? It’s been ten years! Why haven’t you moved on?_

But the angry edge of her thoughts inevitably focused back on herself. She had not snuck off-base to disappear, no matter how much she claimed to want to. She was attending meetings and dinners as if she was an agent again.

She had kissed Angela and opened up that ill-fated volume once more.

It was late afternoon and the sun was setting when she was roused from her musings by a quiet _beep_ and then the sound of the door opening, and then Angela was standing there and blinking in surprise to see Ana in her room.

“Ana! What are—”

Ana stood and strode to meet her. She placed her hands on Angela’s shoulders and then moved one to cup her chin. She watched her expression shift from surprise to comfort. And just as Angela melted under her hands, Ana felt her guilt melt away too.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I’m—I was panicking. It was silly. Torbjörn talked to me, and the other two.”

“Where did you go?”

“Just a café. I took a bike down into the city. Athena probably tracked that.”

Ana held her a moment longer, staring into Angela’s bright blue eyes. She certainly appeared more calm than she had that morning.

“I’m so proud of you,” Ana breathed.

The effect was instantaneous. Angela was pulling her closer, burying her face in Ana’s shoulder, wrapping her arms around her. Ana returned the gesture and held her as close as she could. They had not embraced like this since Dorado. Ana had not even wanted it then. But it felt good now to hold Angela against her and breathe in the scent of her hair and feel the warmth of her. It felt good to feel Angela’s hands digging into her back.

“I’m sorry for what I said that night,” she murmured. “I have underestimated you, _Engel._ ”

“No,” Angela sniffled. Of course, there were the tears. “You have nothing to apologize for. If I had listened to you back then, none of this would have happened. Gabriel wouldn’t— _I_ wouldn’t—”

“The past is done,” Ana said, rubbing gentle circles on her back. “We have no time for _ifs_. You are here now, and what’s done is done. And I’m proud of you for telling them.”

With her arms still wrapped around Angela, she carefully maneuvered both of them backward until Angela was sitting on her lap on the bed.

“What if they all hate me?” she said. Her cheeks flushed as she spoke, perhaps realizing how childish she sounded.

“Well, did Torbjörn say he hated you?”

“No. No, he was very kind.”

“Reinhardt?”

“Of course not! He almost broke all my bones hugging me, but...”

“And I don’t think Lena’s ever hated anyone. So that’s four of us who don’t hate you.”

“Four?” Angela echoed, frowning.

“Four,” Ana repeated. She closed the distance between them and captured Angela’s mouth with her own.

The dorm beds were twins, too small to fit the two of them side-by-side. But Ana was comfortable lying back on the sheets and holding Angela curled up atop her. Her fingers were twined through Angela’s hair and stroking gently.

They had at least an hour before dinner. She might as well keep Angela company until then.

“After everything’s calmed down, I’m going to ask everyone what I should do,” Angela spoke up. With her face half-turned into Ana’s chest, the words were difficult to discern.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been wondering if I should destroy it.”

“Destroy?” Ana craned her neck upward. “But you and Gabriel—”

“It wouldn’t have any effect on us, I don’t think. But then there would be no risk of Talon getting it. No more Reapers.”

Ana stroked along Angela’s scalp through her soft hair.

“Why haven’t you done it already?”

“I kept telling myself I needed to study it. To properly understand what happened to me, and to him. That I would need it functioning for that. But I’ve been too much of a coward to even do that. A decade and I’m too scared to look into it. And if I can’t be brave enough to do that, I might as well destroy it.”

“You were brave today,” Ana said. Angela lifted her head to smile. Her hair formed a messy halo around her head. So angelic.

For a brief instant Ana wanted to say something cold and sharp to make the smile disappear. For just an instant she wanted to make Angela contrite and bowed under the weight of guilt again.

The instant passed and left her feeling empty.

“Too little, too late,” Angela murmured.

“Better than nothing,” Ana said, and her hands moved to cup Angela’s chin and guide her upward until they were kissing. Angela moved eagerly into her touch. Ana sucked hard on her lower lip and felt as well as heard Angela’s moan. The doctor’s tongue slipped into her mouth. In her haste their teeth clacked together, but Ana did not mind. The weight of Angela atop her felt good, as did her mouth.

When they pulled apart, Angela’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes were still swimming with tears. There was a look on her face that Ana had not seen in quite some time. She was staring down at Ana as if she was the whole world, as if she was the only thing that mattered.

Ana might as well have been in Dorado again, colliding into her past. They might as well have been in Zurich, tumbling together in Angela’s old bunk.

Night at the Watchpoint and Fareeha turning her back and walking away. Angela approaching her tearfully with that _look_ on her face.

_Frau und Herr Ziegler—_

Ana closed her eyes.

“Come here, _Engel,_ ” she rasped, and made it clear with her hands what she meant.

And she did not have to open her eyes when Angela’s thighs were wrapped about her head and Angela was rocking her hips and moaning as she rode her face. Ana pulled the noises out of her with her tongue and teeth and lips and hardly noticed the taste or smell of her. She was somewhere else, sometime else, fighting alongside Jack and Gabriel, cradling Fareeha in her arms, being young and reckless and incredible. But she could not be in Watchpoint: Gibraltar and eating out Angela Ziegler, because Overwatch had dissolved a decade ago and Ana Amari had been dead even before that.

* * *

 “We’ve got this entrance covered, if your little pods do their job properly.”

“My _turrets_ will perform exactly as anticipated,” Satya sniffed. “I hope the same can be said of yours, Mister Lindholm.”

The single road that wound around the outside of the Rock of Gibraltar and down to the city and beyond entered the base through a tunnel sealed with thick steel doors. Athena’s systems could open them, though any authorized agent could override her with the manual keypad.

There were nooks and crannies in the stone roof of the tunnel, perfect places for Satya’s turrets to nestle. Though it pained her somewhat to forsake style, she’d made them a mottled grey to blend with the rock instead of her signature clean white and electric blue.

Lindholm had taken a different approach to camouflage, namely constructing his turrets onto the signs that posted information about the base. From the front they were incongruous; only from behind could one see the extra machinery affixed to the signposts. Satya begrudgingly admitted to herself that they were cleverly built, as rugged as they appeared. The same could be said of the man in front of her.

“Why don’t we run some tests? Let’s get some training bots down in here and you can see for yourself what my babies can do.”

Satya was amenable to the idea, though she lingered by the huge doors for a few moments. The tunnel was vast, reminiscent of the hangars but far more barren. There were just bright white floodlights and the painted lane dividers. She wanted to describe it as claustrophobic, but surely that was the wrong word for so vast a space. Too exposed? But that couldn’t be right either, not when being outside, even on a broad plain, didn’t elicit such a feeling.

Somewhere between the two, then.

Then she realized what she was thinking and exactly what she wanted to do, and suddenly it made sense.

“Are you coming?” Lindholm had walked ahead; when he called back, his voice echoed.

“I’ll wait here, if that’s acceptable,” she said. She refused to raise her voice, leaving it small-sounding and insubstantial.

“Suit yourself.”

He disappeared around the bend and his footfalls got quieter and quieter until she heard the far door open and slam.

Alone.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply in and out. A sudden rush of childish excitement caught her as her eyes opened again. A pointless urge. She needed to swallow it and stifle it, let out the energy in a way that was less obvious, less _frivolous—_

But this was not Vishkar. She was a not-yet-official agent of an organization staffed with ex-killers and rebels and mavericks. Of more immediate relevance, she was entirely alone.

She took a step forward and then another, relishing the echo of her heels hitting the ground. Then another, and another, and she was _running,_ bounding through the vast empty space with nobody to see her, nobody to watch her, nobody to stop her or laugh at her. There was just the energy pumping through her veins as she turned on one foot and spun and then moved back the other way, her aimless energy redirecting itself as she fell into the forms of a familiar dance.

She was smiling, beaming, the expression feeling almost foreign. How long had it been since she had danced properly? How long since she had felt so... _free_?

They were meant to be increasing the base’s defenses. Talon had attacked once and could do so again at any moment. It was irresponsible of her both to be spending her time like this and to feel so euphoric in doing so. But that niggling thought in the back of her mind that sounded suspiciously like Sanjay was tiny against the feeling soaring through her.

She spun once, twice, hands gesturing in tandem with her feet. And then again, except this time she saw something other than the stone and asphalt of the tunnel blurring before her eyes. There was someone standing beside the wall.

She froze at once. Her heart was pounding from more than the exertion. Guilt and shame caught up and burned through her excitement as if it had never been there at all. Only then did she identify the person standing before her.

“What are—what are you doing here?” she spluttered.

Fareeha moved away from where she’d been leaning against the stone. She had been smiling, but her expression shifted to something more serious as she stepped forward. Her hands were held out even as Satya instinctively crossed her arms.

Her flesh-and-blood fingers drummed a nervous beat against her prosthetic’s elbow. Her breath was shallow; with any luck she would start sweating too.

“I need to know how the perimeter looks. And I heard someone I like seeing might be down here.”

“I’m sorry,” Satya said, looking away. Fareeha was close now, just a handful of feet away. Her arms slowly dropped as Satya failed to respond to the gesture. “Lindholm went to get some training bots so we could test them.”

“I know, I passed him.” There was a small crease between Fareeha’s eyebrows. “Why are you sorry?”

“I should be...working, not...wasting time like this.”

“Oh!” The crease vanished. “You’re allowed to waste time. Especially when you look so good doing it.”

Satya felt her cheeks grow warm. Still she found it hard to look at Fareeha for more than a second at a time. “It was silly. There’s just so much space down here and I haven’t done it in a while.”

“It’s not silly! I should be apologizing. I’m the one who interrupted you. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. You just looked so—happy, and I didn’t want to make you stop. But that’s made you uncomfortable and I’m sorry.”

Satya’s voice was caught in her chest. She didn’t know how to respond and doubted she could speak even if she had the words. An emotion was swelling through her, the same one that Fareeha always seemed to inspire in her. Not comfortable, but warm. Too large for her to contain it.

Fareeha was still speaking.

“It was pretty. You were so pretty. I haven’t seen you smile like that before.”

“Again,” Satya interrupted, immediately amazed at her own straightforwardness.

Fareeha blinked. “Again?”

The words were clear in her mind but lodged resolutely in her throat, and all she could manage was was to meet Fareeha’s eyes with her head tilted and her cheeks far too warm. But Fareeha seemed to understand, as she _so often_ did, and she took another step forward and gently took Satya’s hands in hers. Satya laced their fingers together and squeezed.

“You were beautiful,” Fareeha murmured. “I could watch you forever.”

Warmer. Satya’s thoughts felt fuzzy. She was discombobulated and unsure of what to do with herself. She was utterly unused to feeling like this. Warm, but so foreign. Good, but terrifying.

“You’re just saying that.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

Fareeha’s thumb stroked hers. Satya prayed for the moment to end or stretch forever.

“A flatterer.”

“You deserve flattery. But it’s all the truth.”

Satya shook her head. It was all she could do. Her words failed when Fareeha was looking at her like that, so earnest. She meant what she was saying, and that made it all the more difficult to hear. Satya did not know what she was expected to say or do now. Her mind was a blank of static.

Good, but terrifying.

Fareeha seemed to notice. She ran her thumb gently over Satya’s a final time and then released her hands.

“I found more puzzle pieces this morning. Seems someone snuck them into my medicine cabinet.”

Satya smiled despite herself.

“If Athena is letting anyone into your room, that’s certainly a concern.”

She’d had to explain to Athena what she was up to before the AI would let her in. She was amazed at her capacity for understanding such variables. How did Athena decide that hiding a gift was a suitable explanation to outweigh security? Could she ever make such a decision with regards to the base as a whole? Was that a weak spot Talon could exploit? How fascinating to think of the vulnerabilities of a human replicated in a machine.

She had asked Winston, but his knowledge of Athena’s learning capabilities was limited. His expertise was more in speeding up her functions and streamlining her performance compared to her predecessor. Even he couldn’t tell her who had programmed Metis, Athena’s predecessor. These were mysteries that she had some interest in unraveling, but there were too many questions and too little time.

“You’re cruel, making them all the same color. I don’t even have a picture.”

“I told you, the picture will reveal itself when the puzzle is complete. And the pieces are not uniform shapes. Have you put any together yet?”

“A few.”

“See? It’s hardly impossible.”

She had assembled the puzzle herself after shaping it from her left hand just to make sure it worked, and then once more simply because it was fun. With Vishkar she’d had no time for such frivolous pursuits, but she remembered jigsaw puzzles from her abridged childhood. Sanjay would say she was regressing. To her it felt instead like coming home.

“If I don’t find all the pieces myself, will you give me a hint?” Fareeha asked teasingly.

“Hmm.” Satya tapped her finger against her lips and pretended to consider the matter. “Perhaps when February comes around?”

“February!” Fareeha groaned. “I thought it was supposed to be a New Year’s present.”

“Some things are worth waiting for.”

“They are,” Fareeha agreed, and looked at her, and her smile broadened until the deliciously uncomfortable feeling returned and Satya had to turn away again. Then she saw the stone walls around them, and the huge vault doors, and she remembered what they were supposed to be doing.

Fareeha cleared her throat.

“So how are the turrets?”

* * *

 Zenyatta’s ability to move silently was uncanny, almost creepy. When Genji had first come to the Shambali, his would-be master had snuck up on him so many times that there could be no doubt it was intentional. It had infuriated Genji at the time. Only much later did he realize Zenyatta had intended it as a joke. But the more time he spent with his master, he found he could anticipate him. Perhaps there were small noises his subconscious could detect. Perhaps it was Ryūjin or the spiritual connection they’d forged. Whatever the reason, Zenyatta could no longer sneak up on him. He could always tell when he’d look over his shoulder and see his master there.

So he didn’t even have to turn around to know that he was no longer alone where he sat on the catwalk that overlooked the launch pad.

“Master.”

“Genji, are you all right?”

He shrugged, then sighed.

Zurich, and now Gibraltar. He had come this time of his own volition, but just the same, here he was once again being reminded that his body was not his own, that, no matter what pretty assurances Angela might give him, he had ceased being fully human years ago.

“What did Doctor Ziegler wish to talk to you about?”

Genji shook his head. He couldn’t look at Zenyatta. All he could do was envision Angela looking at him with remorse and sorrow drawn into every line of her face. Just as she’d looked at him on the cliffs, but under wildly different circumstances.

“She said she needed to tell me—that the—the thing she told us about—she used it on me. More than once. Back when she first found me.”

He hadn’t really known what to say. He had thanked her for telling him and then left the medbay as quickly as he could. He hadn’t wanted to look at her any longer. He’d wanted time to think, time to be alone. But now that Zenyatta was here, he was relieved for the company.

His right thigh itched. Ryūjin stirred underneath his skin. He could feel the dragon’s heartbeat echoing through him in a much slower, deeper pulse than his own.

 _Kyuuseishu_ , a voice like cymbals intoned. _Kyuuseishu_. And then, as always, _nasake_.

Genji closed his eyes and forced him down. Suppressing Ryūjin had always been nigh on impossible—he was, after all, a spirit older and more powerful than Genji or any other human could hope to be. But as he’d learned meditation and peace among the Shambali, he’d discovered that he could let his thoughts drift until Ryūjin’s voice was only a small note at the back of his mind. He did not want to commune with the dragon at present. He did not wish to hear, repeated again, the things he had heard so often before.

“You feel betrayed,” Zenyatta said. Genji felt a gentle hand come to rest on his shoulder. He lifted his own to cover it. In Nepal, his master had almost always felt cold, but here where the climate was far milder his metal was warmer too.

“Ryūjin is right. Why should I be angry? I already knew she went to extremes to save me. What difference does this make?”

“It makes a difference because you did not know about it.” Zenyatta moved forward then, sinking down and coming to rest beside his pupil. “Anger is natural.”

“She said it hadn’t gone _wrong_ for me like it did for Reyes.”

“Are you afraid of that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know what to be afraid of. I don’t know what this means and neither does she. That’s what bothers me. I finally began to feel that my body belonged to me again. I came to terms with being a cyborg. But it is not mine. It never has been. It was the clan’s and then it was Blackwatch’s.”

Zenyatta was silent for a few moments. Then he extended one hand, palm up, into Genji’s lap. Genji took it.

“Our friend Bastion was constructed as a tool of war. I was programmed to function as a janitor. Commander Amari rebelled against her mother to become a soldier. Winston escaped his fellows to live alone on Earth. Ms. Vaswani stood up for justice against the company that shaped her.

“To live is to be set a path and to diverge from it. You disobeyed your family’s orders. You left Blackwatch as soon as you were able. You have always been your own man, Genji.”

He didn’t know if it was the words or the hand in his or simply Zenyatta’s presence that helped. But these were reminders he appreciated.

Ryūjin, at first, had terrified him, and then they had struggled against each other, two souls trapped in a single form. But now he could not imagine being alone. The dragon had become an ally and then a friend and then truly a part of him.

The body-not-his, when he awoke in Zurich, had repulsed him. But because of what Hanzo had done, he had joined Overwatch and helped to overthrow his own family. He had been around the world and seen more than he could have dreamed of.

He had met his master.

They were comforting thoughts, but still he thought of Angela and the secret she had kept and Reaper, their former commander, somewhere out there, and he could not be completely at ease.

“It is a shock,” Zenyatta said, reading him as easily as he always did. “Of course, you will need time. Would you like to be alone?”

“No. I am grateful that you found me.”

They sat in silence. They were high enough here that the sound of the waves was just a dull roar. There were seagulls flying in circles and crying out, though. Gibraltar was beautiful. Genji had been there now and then with Blackwatch, but he had never had the chance to really enjoy it. Hanamura, too; he had only realized the beauty of that place once he’d left it far behind. Going back and confronting Hanzo, he had expected the homecoming to elicit nostalgia in him, some longing for the childhood he’d never really had. But the city just left him feeling strangely empty. He didn’t belong there anymore. Even the halls of Shimada Castle, eerily familiar though they were, were just old wood. It was objectively beautiful, but he had been glad to leave.

If he returned to Nepal, would it be the same? How long could this place serve as his home?

He squeezed Zenyatta’s hand, and his master responded with slight pressure of his own.

“It is an honor to be here for you, Genji.”

Neither he nor Zenyatta nor any of the others could see the future. He had been glad to answer the recall and that had not changed. One day his body might disintegrate like the Reaper’s, and one day the organization might collapse around them, but in this moment he could find happiness. And Ryūjin, slumbering just beneath his skin, rumbled a low agreement.

* * *

 The Oasis summit wherein prominent medical researchers from around the world gathered to present and share the fruits of their labor had captivated the field ever since Minister of Genetics Moira O’Deorain had first instituted it a handful of years back. It was a point of prestige to attend, let alone to be invited to speak. Angela had never gone. It had been after the fall of the first Overwatch, when she had sworn off her research. The city, too, was a reminder of things she had desperately sought to forget.

But this year she’d received an invitation, staid and reserved and complete with the signature of the minister herself, to present her research. She had intended to decline, knowing full-well that the invitation was just the result of the reformed Overwatch being thrust into the spotlight. She didn’t have anything new to present anyway.

But then Ana had reappeared, and she found herself thinking of starting her research again. Presenting at the conference meant that her airfare and board would be covered, which was a relief to both her and Overwatch’s quite limited budgets.

So now she was hurrying to throw together something that wouldn’t immediately be discovered for what it was: a last-minute effort cobbled together from the bones of her older work. She was doing a lot of digging about in Athena’s copies of Metis’s old drives, digging up the diaries and logs she’d kept of her work the last time. It was difficult to find anything that she hadn’t already published and publicized a decade ago, save of course for the Fólkvangr. But as she’d barely told her own comrades about that a week ago, she was not exactly prepared to unveil it to the world.

Now it was almost one in the morning and she was sick of looking at screens and retyping her old papers in fancy new language, so she left her office and wandered toward the kitchen for a snack or something to keep her awake.

Given the nocturnal habits of many of the base’s inhabitants, she was unsurprised to see the light already on, but she was a little surprised at who she saw there. Hana was sitting cross-legged on the counter and Satya leaning on it beside her, both holding mugs. The latter looked more relaxed than Angela had ever seen her before. Her hair was down and her headpiece off, and she wore just an oversized shirt, loose pants, and slippers.

Both of them turned when Angela moved into the doorway, and immediately Satya drew her arm across herself, her smile gone.

That was a typical reaction for the woman, Angela tried to tell herself, and not because of the meeting and her confession. But the reassurances rang empty and hollow and she wished she’d just stayed in her office, where there was nobody to look askance in her direction.

“Doctor Ziegler,” Hana said, offering a wave. She appeared unruffled. A consummate professional.

“Sorry to bother you,” Angela said, smiling weakly. “What are you two doing up?”

“I was talking to my parents,” Hana said. “And I’ve got a stream in a little bit.”

“How are your parents?”

“Eh, they’re fine.” She shrugged. “I try to call home once a week. Since I can’t talk a lot about this stuff with them, they just tell me what they’re up to.”

“Do you miss them?”

It was a careless question, and Angela regretted asking it when the corners of Hana’s mouth twitched downward.

“No more than when I was living with the military ,” she said, tone slightly clipped.

Angela wished she could say that she had asked not to belittle Hana, not to insinuate she was little more than a child, but because she wanted to imagine it. She wanted to know what it would feel like to have a home and people waiting somewhere far away for her. To discuss the minutiae of her days and theirs with them.

She could not say that. Instead she looked away from Hana and moved over to the refrigerator to retrieve a bottle of mineral water.

“And you, Satya?”

“Just working. I like it here at night. I like being able to keep my own schedule. And since Hana was up, I asked if she wanted to share tea with me.”

Satya glanced to her side at the stovetop, which bore a pot filled with a milky-brown liquid.

“There’s some left over—would you like it?”

The kitchen did smell lovely, and the offer felt sincere, so Angela hesitated only a little bit before smiling and nodding. Chai would perhaps be the perfect thing to keep her awake a bit longer.

“What are _you_ doing up?” Hana asked. Her tone was pointed. Angela supposed she deserved that.

“I’m going to a conference in Oasis at the end of the month—I have to prepare a presentation.”

Satya seemed to perk up at that.

“What sort of a conference?”

“There’s a medical summit held every year. They invited me to speak, and it’s a good press opportunity for Overwatch, so...” She shrugged.

“You aren’t excited?” Satya frowned. “Have you ever been before?”

“Not to this one, but I’ve been to the city.”

“That place has a reputation,” Hana cut in. “Scientific progress above all else—whatever that means.”

Her eyes met Angela’s. Perhaps this time the slight was not imagined.

“Vishkar was eager to gain a foothold there,” Satya said, lightening the tension. “There were recent negotiations with the ministers. I attended such a meeting once. They were—showing me off, I suppose.”

“Have you been, then?” Angela asked. She did not know much about the former Vishkar architech, but she knew that Satya was fond of patterns and organization, two things that Oasis had in abundance.

“No. But I’ve always wanted to go. The pictures are beautiful. Just to visit the university there—!”

She broke off, suddenly looking perturbed. Hana gave her a gentle nudge, but she shook her head, the furrow between her eyebrows deepening.

“I shouldn’t want that. It was something that Vishkar wanted, to have a presence there. That’s not something that I should want.”

“That’s dumb,” Hana said, sparing Angela from formulating an appropriate response. “You’re allowed to want that. It’s not like they wanted to destroy it and you do too; it wouldn’t hurt anyone if you visited. You should visit.”

She met Angela’s eyes again, but this time her eyes were wide, her eyebrows raised. Angela got the hint.

“Would you...care to accompany me at the end of the month? I don’t know if the conference would interest you, but it’s hosted at the university. It’s just a weekend, and you wouldn’t have to attend any of the presentations if you didn’t want to. There’s plenty to explore in the city.”

Satya glanced between the two of them. Her expression was less troubled, but her forehead remained furrowed.

“Would that really be all right?”

“Well, it’s not my decision, but I would be glad to have you. We would just need Fa—Commander Amari to agree.”

Angela liked the idea the more she thought about it. The conference would keep her occupied during the day, but perhaps she and Satya could spend mornings and evenings together. Company would help keep her from getting stuck in her own head. It might even provide an avenue to learn more about the most recent addition to the ranks of the new Overwatch.

Granted, it would also nullify the financial benefits of her own airfare and board being paid for by the conference, but that was more Overwatch’s problem than her own. The UN was certainly more likely to approve of a such a trip as an expenditure than any offensive mission.

“I think _Commander Amari_ will agree,” Hana said, smiling slyly and nudging Satya once more, who bit her lips together in a futile attempt to stop them from curling upward.

The bitter feeling hit Angela like a slap across the face. She was unprepared and taken by surprise; it was an effort to keep her face neutral. She looked at the little smile on Satya’s face and thought of the times she had seen her holding Fareeha’s hand, seen them sitting together, seen them exchange a chaste kiss at the New Year’s party.

She did not understand. Something corrosive had settled in her stomach and burned away there. She hated Satya for that little smile and Fareeha for causing it and Hana for being in on the joke.

“Commander Amari will make the best decisions for the organization,” Satya said. “We are professionals.”

Professionals who never missed a chance to look at each other, to _touch_ each other, who smiled at each other like the world was a secret and they were in on it. Like a school crush, like the fleeting euphoria of a summer romance. Soon enough they would hurt. Soon enough their pretty little bubble would pop and leave the both of them in free fall.

She felt sick. She needed to leave and stop thinking about it.

It was already too late.

“Well, I should get back to work,” she said hastily. “You two have a good evening.” She turned to escape with her mug held in a white-knuckled grip.

“Ah, Doctor Ziegler,” Satya forestalled her.

Angela breathed in and out and plastered on a smile as she turned around once more.

“Would you be willing to talk to her—to Commander Amari for me? I don’t want...I would like it to be an objective decision.”

“I would be happy to,” she lied, the words tasting like bile, and then she positively fled the kitchen before either of them could stop her or see through her façade.

She returned to her office, but after only a few minutes of staring blankly at the screen she realized it was futile. Her mind would not be distracted. Nor would the hideous feeling in her stomach dissipate.

Now that she was no longer looking at Satya’s face and her shy, sincere smile, it was much more difficult to project her anger onto her. Now it was turning, like an uncontrollable, mercurial beast, on herself. She was the one who deserved it, anyway. She was the disgusting one. How could she look at a happy Satya and hate her for that? How could she spitefully wish for Satya and Fareeha’s relationship to disintegrate? What was wrong with her?

In the bathroom off the medbay she splashed cold water on her face and raked her fingers through her hair and stared at her reflection. A distressed woman with a messy ponytail and dark shadows under her eyes stared back. Angela Ziegler. Mercy. A surgeon and medical researcher who had set out to save the world and had succeeded only in multiplying its ills. Petty enough to snidely wish misfortune on her comrades. A shell filled with an encyclopedic knowledge of human anatomy and the desperate desire to not be alone, as if that was a suitable replacement for empathy. As if it had ever been.

The tears came thick and fast until the sight of the mirror blurred and she became a collection of formless shapes and too-bright colors. She hated herself for crying, for _always crying_ , for never being able to be happy with what she had .

Because she knew, really, why she had reacted like this.

Ana would kiss her, touch her, call her Engel, pull orgasm after orgasm from her. Nothing more. And Angela could not see Fareeha and Satya touching or smiling or holding hands without imagining Ana doing the same with her.

 _I love you_ had never been a confession. It had been a plea.

* * *

Ana jolted awake to the darkness of her room. Someone was banging on the door. Her hand groped blindly through the dark for the sidearm she kept on the bedside table. It took her a moment to orient herself; she had startled awake under similar circumstances countless times on the run. Usually it was just the owner of wherever she was staying, but sometimes it would be law enforcement, or someone after her life.

She was at Watchpoint: Gibraltar, she reminded herself, but the reminder came with the sardonic thought that that didn’t negate any of those possibilities.

She kicked the sheets off and walked over to the door with the pistol still held in her hand. Once she was close enough to look through the peephole, however, she relaxed. She took a moment to press her forehead to the doorframe and sigh before unlocking and pulling it open.

“Angela, what do you _want_? It’s two in the morning. We had better be under attack—”

“I’m sorry,” Angela interrupted her. Her eyes, Ana saw, were glassy, and her cheeks splotchy. She had been crying. She had also traded her lab coat for a loose-fitted shirt and sweatpants. Appropriate for this time of night, at least.

 _You will be_ , Ana wanted to growl. She could hardly believe Angela’s nerve, pounding on her door and waking her up for apparently no good reason.

“Well, get on with it,” she said impatiently. The bright lights of the hallway were forcing her to squint and a headache was taking root in her temples.

Angela seemed reluctant to say whatever she had come to say. Her eyes met Ana’s and then flicked nervously away again.

Ana was abruptly struck by a memory that must have been almost two decades old. They had been in Angela’s dorm room, its inhabitant lolling naked across her sheets with her hair spilling around her on the pillow like a golden halo. Her slim legs had been hooked over Ana’s shoulders, her heels digging into her back. She was still panting from her climax. The sight of her rosy cheeks and her breasts heaving had been heavenly. Ana had lifted her head, chin wet, and grinned with the satisfaction of a fox who had found its way into the chicken coop.

 _Please_ , Angela had said.

 _Please what, Engel?_ Ana had bitten down and sucked on the supple flesh of Angela’s inner thigh. The angel had stifled her scream in the back of her hand.

Her fingers had moved from the back of Ana’s head. Slowly they had tangled in the wiry hair atop her mound, and then drifted lower. Ana had watched, entranced; Angela was not the type to put on a show unless specifically ordered. But then her hand moved between her lips, and she was spreading herself for Ana’s benefit, that hot wet crevice where Ana’s tongue had just been. The slick of her shone in the light and it had been difficult for Ana not to immediately lean in once more and devour.

_Would you...please, would you...would you shave me?_

The words had come out in a tumble and then she had immediately averted her eyes. Her cheeks were an even brighter pink than before.

Ana had smiled wider.

 _I like your hair_.

 _Please_ , Angela had said, more a moan than anything else, enough to make goosebumps rise on Ana’s arms.

 _Later_ , she’d said, and gone down again.

Angela wore the same embarrassed look now on the same ageless face, but it elicited none of the same reactions in Ana. She felt only exhaustion and impatience. Once upon a time Angela had been ambrosia, but now Ana had feasted herself to sickness. Whenever she tasted it now, desperate to recapture the magic of her first sips, it only made the nausea return.

“Can I sleep with you?”

Ana blinked and squinted. Surely she had heard correctly, but she didn’t know how to begin to respond. Her sleep-fogged mind was blank.

After she’d uttered the words, the nervousness left Angela. She visibly slumped and looked away. Her arms were wrapped around herself. She looked very small there, standing in the hallway. She looked very miserable.

She was waiting, Ana realized, to be turned away. She was waiting, perhaps, for a harsh word.

Ana could think of many things that might have inspired such fear in her, and suddenly she was resenting herself and remorseful for all of them. Who would she be if she responded curtly in the negative and shut the door in Angela’s face? Yes, she was tired and irritated and would have rather been left alone and it was certainly a dangerous precedent. But she saw the hollow look on Angela’s face and made a decision she was sure she would regret sooner or later, but that she could not regret in the moment.

“Come in,” she said simply, and stood aside.

Angela’s head snapped up. She looked as though she had questions to ask, as though she couldn’t believe her ears, but then she was quickly walking past Ana into the room as if afraid she’d change her mind.

“I’m sorry to be a bother,” she said, standing in the middle of the room with her arms still wrapped around herself. Ana closed and locked the door and headed quickly back to her bed, eager to get her bare feet off the cold tile floor.

She was halfway under the duvet when she looked back to discover Angela still just standing, looking out-of-place and small, at the foot of her bed.

Ana said nothing. She beckoned with one hand, and Angela came. She slid onto the edge of the bed and lay on her side to take up as little space as possible. Ana pulled the duvet down to cover both of them.

She could see the tension in Angela’s shoulders. By necessity, the size of the bed forced them close together. It had been years, decades, since Ana had actually slept with someone. This was a reminder of why. She’d slept in much more cramped quarters on missions over the years, but that had been different. It lacked intimacy.

The hand on Angela’s hip was hesitant, testing the waters. But then she curled into the touch, and Ana let her arm encircle the other woman’s waist. She pulled their bodies together until her breasts were pressed into Angela’s back and she could feel her warmth.

She kissed the back of her neck once, simply. Angela’s shoulders were no longer tensed. Ana felt her breathe in and out.

She closed her eyes.

* * *

The sprawl of corridors and tunnels hidden in the Rock of Gibraltar was mazelike, difficult to navigate even with a map. It was fortunate Athena’s oversight extended throughout even the most remote sections, and she was always prepared to offer guidance. Certainly asking her for help was the quickest way to get anywhere within the base.

But Satya liked exploring on her own, too, wandering down each and every lonely tunnel to make a mental map of the place. She liked to know her surroundings. If pressed, she might have said that knowledge provided a tactical advantage, and to assist with maintaining the base’s defenses it was a necessity. But that was more of an excuse than an explanation. She just liked to have the knowledge. There was something pleasing about hearing her footsteps echo down corridors that hadn’t been used in decades.

According to Athena, most of the tunnels dated back to the original excavation in the late eighteenth century. When Overwatch had begun seeding its bases worldwide, the Rock had made sense. Restoration was necessary, of course, but soon the caves had a new purpose.

She knew it was silly, but wandering around them now, a decade after Overwatch’s fall, made her feel something like an archaeologist. An explorer.

This morning, it was with no small amount of pride that she successfully navigated from her room to the area that housed the fitness and training facilities without making a single wrong turn. It had become her morning routine to get up, shower, and dress, and then head to the gym to meet Fareeha, who was just finishing up her workout. Satya knew that she should probably be keeping a similar regimen, but when she preferred to work late into the night it was difficult to inspire herself to get out of bed early just to sweat.

She was approaching the doors to the gym when they swung open, forcing her to hastily step back.

“Oh! Sorry, Ms. Vaswani.”

It was the cyborg—Genji, she reminded herself. Genji Shimada. And at his right side was his brother, wearing his usual steely expression.

“You’re fine,” she said, attempting a smile.

Satya hadn’t spent much time with either of them, but Fareeha knew Genji decently well, and spoke highly of him. He was outgoing, frequently speaking out at meetings and dinner. Satya found herself positively inclined toward him mostly because making eye contact with his visor was easy.

The brother—Hanzo—was an enigma. He seemed to avoid the rest of them, an impulse she could certainly understand.

“You look way too nice to be working out.” Genji had paused, it seemed, to talk to her. Satya wished he wouldn’t. Hanzo, on Genji’s other side, shifted his weight and crossed his arms impatiently.

“I’m not exercising,” she clarified. “Just meeting Fareeha.”

“She is lucky!” Genji nodded.

“I’m lucky,” she murmured. “Were you two—?”

“Sparring.” Genji stretched one arm up and wrapped the other around his shoulder. Satya wondered if all the metal made exercise that much hotter. Did he sweat under it? How was he to shower without disturbing the mechanical augmentations of his body?

They were obtuse , probably invasive questions, so she did not ask.

“He’s no match for me, of course. Just like when we were kids—”

“Genji.”

They both turned to Hanzo, who had interrupted. The permanent lines etched between his eyebrows seemed even deeper than normal, and his mouth curled sharply downward. Satya didn’t understand what had bothered him. Genji’s banter was meaningless, perhaps annoying, but even she could recognize it as banter.

“Well, see you later,” Genji said, offering her a wave and turning away. She was not sorry to bid farewell to the awkward conversation.

She was unprepared, however, for Hanzo to catch her eye and offer the smallest of nods before following his brother.

Inside the weight room, Fareeha was seated at a bench with her back to the door. Satya approached until she saw that her—her—what? Commander? Partner? ... _Girlfriend?_ — was wearing earbuds. She stood awkwardly, not wishing to disturb the workout but unsure whether she should turn around and wait outside.

She watched as Fareeha lifted the bar and its accompanying weight. Her left arm, the one still flesh and blood, strained with the effort. Her shoulder was so defined, so muscular. Her skin shone with sweat, but Satya was still overcome with the inappropriate desire to reach out and touch her. The muscle would be taut. What would it feel like, to rest her palm on Fareeha’s shoulder as she lifted the weight? Would she feel the muscle ripple under her hand? Would the stickiness of her sweat make it repulsive?

She didn’t understand her fixation, and that made it all the more uncomfortable to stand there. Her right hand jittered nervously until she caught her wrist and squeezed.

After what seemed much too long, Fareeha returned the bar to its holder and toweled off her face, and only then did she notice that she was not alone.

She was quick to pull her earbuds out, and the broad smile that followed almost made Satya forget her discomfort.

“Satya! Sorry, I was—I didn’t hear you. What time is it?”

It was almost a quarter past ten. Usually she would be finished right on the hour, and never more than five minutes after.

“I’m sorry to sneak up,” Satya said. “I didn’t want to bother you.”

“It is not a bother.” Fareeha slung her towel over her shoulder and retrieved her water bottle and phone from where they lay on the mats.

“When you lift,” Satya asked, as the two of them walked together back out the way she had came, “what does the difference between your arms feel like? Does the pressure feel—concentrated in your left shoulder?”

Fareeha considered. “It’s been long enough that I’m just used to it. But at first it was definitely weird. Unbalanced.” She grinned. “You know, you could join me one of these days and find out for yourself.”

Their knuckles brushed. With Satya on the left and Fareeha on the right, it was skin-to-skin. Satya remembered her staring and pulled away as if afraid the touch would show Fareeha her thoughts.

“I will lift weights when I have to and not until then.”

“Well, maybe the Strike Commander should make weight training mandatory for all agents.”

Satya smiled.

She wasn’t so much opposed to the idea of working out as she was opposed to the idea of Fareeha seeing her. Aside from her laughable upper body strength, she did not want Fareeha to see her damp and shiny with sweat and her hair sticking to her skin. Whatever piece of her had managed to capture Fareeha’s interest would undoubtedly be overpowered by that.

“Even Bastion?”

“Hmm. Bastion and Zenyatta can spot the rest of us.”

Satya was struck by the mental image of laying on a bench with the bar above her, Bastion leaning over her and offering high-pitched beeps of encouragement.

Their hands brushed again. Satya looked down at their arms. It would be such a simple thing to bring her fingers up and feel Fareeha’s warmth under her skin. A simple motion. An neurochemical impulse that originated in her mind as desire and would travel from brain to spine to arm in an instant.

So easy, but her heart was pounding in her throat. Fareeha might as well have been standing on the other side of a canyon. The crossing wasn’t so simple after all.

They had touched before, of course. They touched frequently. They kissed! Their kisses had even turned sloppy and open-mouthed in the way that Satya had always wondered about, certain she would find it repulsive but the reality quite different. This was minute compared to that. Whatever label their relationship deserved, it would not be inappropriate to do what she wanted.

She swallowed, and then her hand was moving, the electrical message sent. And Fareeha’s bicep was warm and firm under her fingers, and her skin wasn’t sticky after all. Satya let her fingers stroke down, over the crook of Fareeha’s elbow and the swell of her forearm, until they brushed over the pulse in her wrist. Then she took her hand in her own and laced their fingers together, and only then did she dare look up.

Fareeha was smiling, but somehow it wasn’t just a smile. Her eyes were soft and her lips just barely turned upward.

She looked calm, Satya realized.

“Thank you,” Fareeha murmured.

Satya had to look away then; her cheeks were burning. She wanted to ask what she’d done to deserve thanks, but she was content too just to leave their fingers interwoven and the words unspoken.

It was a popular time for breakfast. In the mess hall, Lindholm and Doctor Ziegler were sitting at a table by the window, and Lúcio, Mei-Ling, and McCree occupied the larger table. Fareeha and Satya joined them, though Satya couldn’t help but notice the sideways glance Lúcio threw her direction, or the downward turn of his mouth. She pursed her own lips and sat very stiffly to indicate she wasn’t particularly enthused about the seating arrangements either.

“How’s the chest?” Fareeha asked.

McCree lifted his hand to pat at his shirt over the spot where the bullet had pierced him. He’d abandoned the sling a week ago, and based on how he’d been performing in joint exercises, the shot he’d taken on New Year’s Eve wasn’t slowing him down at all.

“Doc gave me the all-clear. Wouldn’t mind seein’ that sniper again soon, though. I’d like the return the favor.”

“Even if that really was the Widowmaker? Even if it was Amélie?” Mei-Ling asked, her eyes wide and her tone hinting at a rebuke.

McCree shrugged. “She shot first. And besides, I didn’t say I wanted to kill her. Just settle the score.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s healed, with Angela flying out next week and everything.” Fareeha’s brow was furrowed as she glanced over to the table by the window. “I’m sorry, Jesse. We’ve been working on our defenses. It won’t happen again.”

“What do you have to apologize for? None of us saw it comin’.” He shrugged again and returned to his eggs. “ My shoulder, my problem. And now it’s nobody’s problem.”

“It’ll be my problem if it acts up while Angela’s gone!” Lúcio said, pointing his fork in McCree’s direction for emphasis. “So do those exercises I showed you, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” McCree said, making a point of rolling his eyes and earning himself an elbow in the ribs for it.

“That does remind me.” Fareeha turned to look at Satya, sitting next to her. “Angela mentioned that you wanted to go with her. To Oasis.”

“Oh! Well, I—well—that is—” Suddenly everyone was looking at her, and the desire she’d expressed to Doctor Ziegler a few days ago seemed as vapid and ridiculous as she feared it was. But it wasn’t as if she could pretend she hadn’t said it, so she looked down at her oatmeal and answered. “Yes, I would love to. But I understand if it isn’t feasible.”

“It’s more than feasible,” Fareeha said. Satya was relieved to see her smiling. “ Winston thinks there’s a chance that Talon has operations there. We were going to ask Angela to do some reconnaissance, but it’ll be easier if there are two of you.”

Her hesitation must have shown on her face, because Fareeha quickly continued.

“Nothing serious; don’t worry. Just walking around the city, seeing if Athena can break through any firewalls, things like that.”

That sounded feasible enough, and wandering around the city on foot was exactly what she wanted to do, so Satya nodded.

“Thank you.”

“Would it be easier with three?”

Mei-Ling was leaning forward, her face shining with barely-suppressed excitement.

Fareeha blinked.

“You want to go to Oasis too?”

“Yes! I’ve—well, I went there years ago, back when I first joined Overwatch. The work they did to build the city was revolutionary. The systems were controversial, too. But if I could go back, I could see how it’s advanced since! It’s the kind of example of…er… terraforming?—that could be the key to climate change research.”

She had been leaning even further forward in her seat as she spoke, until she was more standing than sitting. As she finished, she seemed to realize it, and she sat back down with her cheeks pink.

“Sorry. If it doesn’t work, I understand. But if there’s a chance—!”

“She has more of a reason to go than I do,” Satya said.

“I don’t see why not,” Fareeha said, shrugging.

“Hold up. We’re just throwing out vacations now?” Lúcio interrupted. “‘Cause I’ll take one too.”

Satya bristled inwardly . She did not think it had actually been a jab aimed at her, but his words sounded too similar to her own mind berating her desire to go. Doctor Ziegler and Mei-Ling had substantive reasons to attend; she was little more than a sightseer. And whatever Hana said to dissuade the notion, she could not help but wonder how much of the desire was hers and how much was Vishkar’s.

“You just took your vacation. You missed all the excitement,” Fareeha said, and Lúcio conceded the point with a good-natured shrug. “What about you, Jesse? Want to go to Oasis?”

To Satya’s surprise, he grimaced.

“Nah. Think I might be on some watchlists there.”

“What’d you do to get on the bad side of a city with no government?” Lúcio asked incredulously.

“I didn’t do anythin’. Just got an...acquaintance with some sway there, and I got no interest in runnin’ into her again.”

“Really? Who?” Mei-Ling asked.

McCree shook his head. “Best not talk about that. It’s in the past and that’s where it belongs. So thanks but no thanks, Commander—I’ll stay right here.”

.

Angela closed the slim folder containing her presentation notes and slipped it carefully into her bag. For better or for worse, the transport containing her, Mei, and Satya would be flying out that evening. She hadn’t been particularly looking forward to the trip, but having company made it sound more appealing.

She straightened and looked over her shoulder. Ana was sitting on the bed, waiting for her to finish packing. Her face was distant, but when Angela caught her eye her lips twitched upward.

“Done yet?”

“I think so,” she said. She smiled too. “You know, I keep thinking of that time.”

Ana raised her eyebrows.

Angela took a step toward the bed. She lifted one hand to play with her bangs, to sweep them uselessly behind her ear.

“The last time I went—I know you remember.”

Ana’s smile widened.

“Enlighten me.”

Angela took another step forward. She was standing now at the edge of the bed with her legs against Ana’s. She gingerly reached out and, when Ana gave no indication of disapproval, ran her fingers gently over her braid.

“I went to Oasis for a similar conference, and we—I sent you pictures.”

“Pictures! No, I don’t remember that at all.” Ana’s smile was now definitely more of a smirk. “What sort of pictures were they?”

Angela shifted, clenched her thighs.

“Captain Amari…”

“Angela.” Her voice was a low purr.

With the heat between her legs and the woman before her, it might have been a decade ago. The familiar warmth was suffusing Angela. A single moment in which she did not feel pain or guilt or resentment. Just desire. Just the feel of Ana, so close to her, and the smell of her. The softness of her hair. The steadiness of her hawklike eye. It did not matter that her hair was white or her other eye was no more. Everything that had happened between them existed outside the room. Inside, there was only a blushing girl eager to please and the woman whom her life seemed to orbit.

“Pictures of me. Pictures like...this.”

Her hand left Ana’s braid. She lifted the hem of her blouse and drew it slowly up until the pale blue lace of her bra was visible. She cupped her left breast and trailed her thumb over her nipple. Even through the cloth, it felt good. Her matching panties grew steadily more damp.

She let a moan slip past her lips. It was mostly for show, but putting on a show was half the fun.

“Ah, I think I remember.” Instead of taking hold of her, as Angela wanted, Ana shifted back on the bed until her back was resting against the wall. “ A shameless girl sent me pictures of her half-naked on the beach where anyone could see her.”

“Nobody else matters,” Angela said immediately. “Just you seeing. You’re the only one.”

“Did it turn you on, taking them? Sending them?”

Angela closed her eyes and nodded. Her thumb rolled her nipple in circles. She wanted Ana to touch her, to pinch, to suck—

“Take off your shirt.”

She could not obey quickly enough.

“Your pants.”

They hit the floor, and she stepped out of them, left only in her intimates. Ana’s gaze wandered over her skin inch by inch. Could she see a dark stain gathering on Angela’s panties? Were her hard nipples visible through the bra? Angela tried to plea with only her eyes.

 _Touch me, touch me_ —

“Now tell me what you thought about back then. Tell me what you thought while you laid in the sand and showed yourself off for me, Engel. ”

This was harder. Angela’s cheeks were hot. Suddenly the eye contact was difficult to maintain; she focused instead on the wall behind Ana’s head. All her fantasies blurred together, at once too juvenile and too vulgar to speak of.

“I imagined—that you were there with me.”

“Is that all?”

“That you were—I—I touched myself and pretended it was you. On the beach with me, where anyone could see us.”

“Like this?”

Ana’s hand reached out; her fingers stroked along the damp cloth of her panties. It felt good, so good, and Angela rocked her hips into the touch. Her thoughts were scattered. She was here in her dorm room at Watchpoint: Gibraltar, and Ana was touching her; but also she was on the sand of a beach in Oasis, a decade younger and a good deal more carefree, her hands groping at her own body in-between furtive glances up and down the sand to ensure she was alone.

“More,” she said, both an answer and a plea. “In—inside me.”

“Inside?” Ana murmured, her voice a low rumble that resonated down Angela’s spine and conjured goosebumps on her skin. Ana moved her hand upward until it was splayed out on her stomach. It was so warm, but no aid for the ache of her clit. “You made me wonder back then, but—you really are an exhibitionist, aren’t you?”

Angela couldn’t stop the moan. She rocked on her feet and clenched her thighs together as if doing to would do anything for her arousal. The hand remained resolutely in place on her abdomen, no use at all.

“ I just want them to see, to know—”

“Know what, Angela?”

Ana’s fingers slipped barely a centimeter under the hem of her panties. The movement was enough for the cloth to shift, for her to feel the wetness gathered there and the hint of cool air.

“That I’m yours,” she managed.

“Come here.”

Ana’s other hand extended to pull her forward, and Angela could not obey quickly enough. She was scrambling on her knees onto the bed, and then her legs were on either side of Ana’s, and then the hand was moving and spreading her lips and then Ana was fucking her on three fingers, and Angela lowered herself onto them with her lips stretched in a silent cry of pleasure.

She was so wet that it was hardly a stretch at all, and the filthy wet _noise_ of the fingers plunging into her was so lewd that Angela might have been embarrassed if she was capable of it. But the fingers were curling inside her and she could feel the pressure against her front wall, tight and full.

“Captain—”

“Like this?” Ana repeated. Her smile was wicked, almost cruel, and the sight of it had Angela clenching even tighter around her fingers. “Is this what you were thinking about on that beach? Me fucking you out in the open, for all the world to see?”

“ Please,” Angela said, grinding her hips down. “Please—more...”

“ _More_?” Ana’s smile widened even further. “Needy girl. Tell me what you want.”

Angela wasn’t sure she could. All this time and all the things they had done together, but the words remained firmly lodged in her throat. She would be satisfied, really, to continue like this, to rock her hips and hear the squelch of Ana’s fingers spreading her open. It was only the tenuous thread of imagination, those thoughts that had consumed her all those years ago, that made the words come.

“Please—stretch me—all the way. I want—I want your hand— _inside_ —”

Ana’s smile faded; her lips parted. For an instant Angela was terrified that she had gone too far, that speaking up had been a mistake.

But then Ana’s other hand was wrapped around the back of her neck and pulling her closer, and they were kissing, and she could not be afraid any longer, not with Ana’s tongue moving against her own and hungry teeth catching her lower lip. They kissed wet and sloppy as Ana’s fingers curled deep into her and her thumb groped haphazardly at her clit. Angela thrust herself against her, desperate for the friction. Whatever she’d said and whatever she wanted, she could come like this, and soon she would.

Time, however, had not lessened Ana’s ability to read her, nor her delight in leaving her hanging, and just as the orgasm was winding tight inside her the older woman pulled away entirely and smiled at her.

“We’re going to do this properly, _habibti_. Hands and knees.”

The sound that left Angela was less of a moan and more of a whimper. Her stolen climax was still buzzing at the edge of her senses, but as much as she wanted to simply reach down and rub herself to completion, what Ana ordered was even more tantalizing.

Her movements were uncoordinated but as fast as she could manage, shifting onto the bed and positioning herself. It was lovely torture to have to stare at the wall and have only sound and sensation to judge what Ana was doing. The hands wandering up her spine and alighting on the clasp of her bra made her gasp aloud, arching her back. With the help of gravity the straps slid down, but Ana didn’t touch her newly-freed breasts. Instead her hands moved the other direction.

The feeling of her panties being pulled down and her wet cunt exposed to the air made her clit throb all the more. She rolled her hips but found no relief, nothing but the air.

“Ask again.”

Ana’s voice was low and warm. Angela closed her eyes and felt her cheeks grow impossibly warmer.

“Please fuck me.”

“Mm, that’s a good girl.”

Two fingers spread her lips, traced her slit, and then slipped inside. They felt woefully insubstantial compared to what she wanted, even when Ana scissored them. She clenched down. One of the fingers crooked and the pressure against her front wall made her gasp, but it wasn’t enough.

Three, then, in languid pushes that made her certain this was less about properly stretching her and more about properly tormenting her. Her abandoned clit ached, but there was nothing for it but to remain on hands and knees and pray for her captain’s mercy.

“So wet and open for me. And you wanted to do this on the beach? In front of the world?”

The image consumed her. It was disgusting, really, how much the thought turned her on, but disgust was an emotion she couldn’t manage in her current state. It didn’t matter where they were or who was watching. She wanted Ana to take her. The more witnesses, the better. They would only serve as testimony to the reality of it. No longer a relationship cloistered from view.

 _The famed Angela Ziegler, internationally renowned slut_ , some less lust-addled part of her brain commented sardonically. Her hands curled into the sheets.

Ana pulled her fingers out with a squelch. She rounded Angela’s entrance with her index finger, winding her even tighter.

“Are you ready, _Engel_?”

Her voice was serious now, no longer teasing. Angela could not nod fast enough, words tumbling after.

“Yes—yes—please.”

She couldn’t see while it was happening, of course. She was forced to rely only on sensation as Ana’s fingertips slipped in, slow and steady. She could start to feel the stretch as her captain’s hand sank steadily further. She let her breath out in a gas p and forced herself to breathe in slowly.

There was pressure. More than that, she felt _full_. Even the largest toy they’d ever used hadn’t had such girth. She let her hips rock backward, and that movement was enough for Ana’s palm to work its way inside her. Suddenly the stretch was no longer at her entrance but deeper, pressing into her. And the thought that she’d taken Ana’s hand all the way to the wrist was enough to make her clit twitch and her walls clench.

“ _Angela_ ,” Ana said. Her voice was low, reverent—almost a moan. Angela couldn’t help it; she rocked her hips back again. “How does it feel?”

She wasn’t sure she could answer. She wasn’t even sure she had words. She wanted the hand to _move_ , to fuck her properly. She wanted the fingers to curl. There was so much sensation, but still she wanted more. She let her head hang down to look back between her legs, but she could only see Ana’s torso and woefully little else.

“Wonderful,” she said finally, voice little more than a rasp. “So—so good, Captain...”

“You’re so warm ,” Ana said. “So wet. And so beautiful, all spread open for me.”

She moved then, without Angela even needing to open her mouth. Suddenly the hand was a fist deep inside her, as deep as it could go, almost enough to hurt. Before she could make a sound, before she could even process it, it was sliding back out.

Her breaths came out as moans. Each thrust made her rock forward on the bed. Her eyes were closed. She wasn’t even listening to herself. All her attention was solely for Ana, wrist-deep inside her, filling her as she’d fantasized.

When Ana moved her other hand to rub rough circles on her clit, Angela came apart quick enough. The orgasm she’d been denied washed over her as a sound somewhere between a groan and a scream spilled from her lips. She slumped forward to rest her front on the sheets as Ana gently worked her through the climax. The waves of pleasure shrank to ripples and the frantic jerking of her hips slowed. Her breath was ragged.

“Oh, _Engel._ ”

Ana pulled her hand out slowly, the stretch of it at Angela’s entrance and the wet sounds enough to turn her on again. Once it was out, leaving her empty and gaping, she let her hips slump down on the mattress. She was abruptly exhausted, and the flight to Oasis that evening seemed a distant dream.

Ana’s other hand alighted on her hip and gently but insistently rolled her over. Angela flopped limply on her back and looked up into the warm face of her captain. Tired or not, she couldn’t help but smile.

“Thank you,” she murmured, as Ana leaned down for a gentle kiss.

“It was my pleasure.”

“I l—”

The words bubbled out without her thinking about them or meaning them. She caught the sentence before it managed to escape entirely, feeling as if she’d just narrowly missed stepping off a cliff.

She wanted to say it. She needed to say it. But she couldn’t, not after everything that had happened. Not after how the last time had gone wrong.

Ana gave no sign of knowing the transgression that had almost made it past Angela’s lips. She gave one of her enigmatic smiles and held up her right hand. Angela’s slick glistened on every inch of her fingers and palm, drips and strands of wetness catching the light.

“What a mess you’ve made. Be a good girl now and clean it up.”

Angela let her mouth fall open, eager to have Ana’s fingers as a gag, resolutely letting the thing she hadn’t said rot away in the pit of her stomach.

* * *

“It is my honor to welcome the greatest medical minds of the modern age to this cradle of civilization. As the Ministries strive to continue the revolutionary work the founders of our city began, so must all of us push the field of medicine forward...”

Moira O’Deorain had a low, commanding voice that easily filled the auditorium, but Angela wasn’t paying her much attention. She sat in the front row of the audience and drummed her fingers on her program. As soon as O’Deorain finished her introductory speech, it would be her turn. Though that would be a while; if Angela’s memories of the woman’s infamous article were to be trusted, she was fond of digressing.

She had been incredulous when she had heard of O’Deorain’s appointment as Minister. Apparently being ostracized by the vast majority of one’s professional peers meant being radical enough to capture the city’s attention. And now the tables had turned: here they all were, listening in respectful silence while she spoke.

“...hypotheses are met with scorn when they push against the biases of our world. Galileo posited the heretical notion that our little Earth was not the center of the universe, and he suffered for it. Our own Minister Al-Shahrani’s unmatched creativity and passion led her to entertain ideas that others dismissed as impossible. But from my colleague’s work this desert blossomed into a metropolis, and without her we could not gather here today...”

Even with the questionable addition of O’Deorain to the ministries, the city of Oasis was much as Angela remembered. The university, too, was familiar.

But familiarity hadn’t prevent ed her from appreciating the grandeur of it all, especially with Satya and Mei at her side. Mei especially was open and effusive in her awe of the geological miracle of a city. Satya was quieter, but whenever Angela glanced at her she saw a rare smile on the other woman’s face as she took in everything she could.

“... further our knowledge, the quest that binds all of us together, there can be no corner for prejudice of any kind. Ideas must flourish free of bias and preconceived notion. How radical a hypothesis seems is irrelevant. It is our duty and our obligation to test it. Science is an amoral venture. It must exist, as this city exists, outside the shackles that repress progress...”

Mei had insisted, and Satya agreed, on attending Angela’s presentation at the conference. She had attempted to dissuade them with assurances that it would contain very little of substance and nothing that would be remarkable even if they had the background knowledge necessary to understand it. But Mei had been determined, and it would be nice to have friendly faces to look at in the crowd. They would have the rest of the day to explore the city as they pleased, though Angela would be unable to join them.

The three of them had been accosted multiple times by other attendees, most who recognized Angela but a handful who knew Mei as well. Satya stood to the side during these conversations, her mouth fixed in a polite smile while her roaming eyes betrayed her lack of interest. When addressed, she introduced herself concisely before deftly handing the conversation back to the other two. Angela wondered how often Vishkar had brought her to venues like this and paraded her: a rising star, a talented architech, the future of the company…

She had not asked.

“... humbled to honor today a researcher with whom you are all undoubtedly familiar. A doctor whose work exemplifies the breaking down of preconceived boundaries. Her discoveries have ushered in a new age of medical science, and I, for one, am certain that we have only seen a measure of what she is capable of.

It is my great pleasure to welcome Doctor Angela Ziegler!”

Just like Satya, Angela affixed a polite smile to her face as she stood and headed for the stairs up to the stage. Here she was, headlining a conference about recent advancements in the medical world, when her published research all dated a decade prior. She was nothing more than a figurehead. As in Overwatch, she was a pretty face to smile. An angel. It looked good on posters.

She would give a meaningless presentation full of platitudes and dated discoveries. At thirty-seven, she was already a has-been.

She _could_ give them something more, part of her thought. She could tell them about Gabriel Reyes and King’s Row and bodies rising from the grave. She could tell them as she’d told the reformed Overwatch and see all those hundreds of faces staring at her in the same vacant shock.

But as it happened, she didn’t have much of an opportunity to debate pouring out her soul in front of a crowd of strangers. She hardly had time to even collect her thoughts and recall her vapid opening lines.

_Thank you, Minister; it’s an honor to be here—_

She made it up the stairs and onto the stage, and she was shaking O’Deorain’s gloved hand when a shadow fell across the crowd.

Her plastic smile faltered. She looked upward. There was a glass window set into the far wall, a viewpoint from the atrium above. And though it was mid-morning and there had been people walking past moments ago, the view through the glass was black as ink.

O’Deorain’s hand tightened on her own.

Angela’s view dropped to the crowd. She knew where Mei and Satya were sitting. She just managed to catch a glimpse of Mei, frowning and looking upward, before the lights went out.

He was there. She was alone in an abandoned warehouse in Dorado again and he had to be there, because she had been living on guilt and borrowed time since she made the worst mistake of her life in a morgue in Zürich and now it was time to pay the piper.

_You can run, Angela._

She could not hear the chatter of the confused attendees over the pounding of her own heart echoing in her ears. She did not realize that her fingers had clenched down onto O’Deorain’s, desperately holding on to the only thing she could find in the darkness.

But she heard the sound of glass shattering, and then gunfire. She could not breathe. A panicked hysteria descended on the crowd and the chattering swelled to yells and screams.

_Jack can’t protect you forever._

She couldn’t _see anything_ , couldn’t _move_ , could only _stand there_ and focus with every inch of her being to try to locate him. Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness but not quickly enough. He could be standing directly in front of her, shotgun in hand, ready to make good on the promise he’d made those weeks ago.

A new noise joined the chaos as some sort of alarm blared out, and with it flashes of brightness like lightning through the dark. But the intermittent light served only as a sort of demonic strobe, and when Angela saw she wished she hadn’t.

_Sooner or later I’ll get you—_

Talon agents coming through the broken atrium window. Their black insectoid helmets gleamed in the light for an instant at a time before being swallowed again by darkness. This wasn’t even Overwatch; the people in the crowd weren’t soldiers. They were her peers, the rising stars of the field. They were cures and innovations that would now never see the light of day.

She had brought Satya and Mei, and now they too would die with her and because of her.

And then, when she was sure her heart was about to burst from the terror, when she was wobbly on her feet because she had been holding her breath, the light flashed and she saw the mask, bone-white, just meters away from her. An owl or a skull or just her own grim reaper.

She opened her mouth as if to scream or say something to him, but she had no breath left for it. Her mind was blank but for horror. She was unaware of the rest of her body.

She couldn’t see it, but she knew the feel of the shotgun barrel pressed against her skull. Her lips were still parted in that silent scream. Her cheeks were wet.

One final time the light flashed and she saw the mask. His face was now just inches from her own. Perhaps he said something; she couldn’t have heard it.

_—and we’ll find out together._

He pulled the trigger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the end 
> 
> (jk)

**Author's Note:**

> Comments always appreciated! Tell me a favorite line, a favorite scene, or how something made you feel.


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